


Shepherding the flock

by ReverendSwing



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Awakening, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Robin and Lucina needed some space, So they went to a whole other continent, Teacher!Lucina, Teacher!Robin, also pretty much all the students eventually, not Byleth-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 107,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24240892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReverendSwing/pseuds/ReverendSwing
Summary: A traveling Robin and Lucina land themselves in Fódlan after mentions of an isolated continent beyond a notoriously treacherous sea pique Robin's interest. In order to learn more about the place, seek out answers to some questions he has, and earn enough money to pay the local Anna for a trip back to Ylisse in one fell swoop, Robin comes up with what Lucina thinks might be his most ridiculous plan yet : get them hired as instructors at the Garreg Mach Officer's Academy.The students and staff at the monastery learn to deal with their two new oddball foreign instructors. Somehow, this is a good thing.
Relationships: Lucina/My Unit | Reflet | Robin
Comments: 340
Kudos: 406
Collections: Quality Fics





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I ended up with this after seeing a fic about Grima becoming Garreg Mach's librarian, and wondering how Robin would fare. Then I needed an excuse to get him there, and that's how Lucina came in. Expect early chapters to mostly focus on character interactions, and plot derails to only come in later. Haven't written in years and I'm doing this with no beta, so apologies if it's a little stiff round the edges.
> 
> Side note - Robin here is more whimsical and less awkward than in the game, because this is post-Awakening. He doesn't have the weight of the world on his shoulders, he's had time to make enough new memories, make enough friends, he knows who he is, and he's on the closest thing to a honeymoon two workaholics like Lucina and him will likely ever get, so he gets to showcase just why he fits in so well with the Shepherds and just why he's Morgan's father : because he's just as weird as the lot of them.

“So, Fódlan at last. I have to admit, I’m a little curious, what with how much trouble we had to go through to get there. Think we can stay a little while and take our time ? I’m still surprised at how hard it was to dig up anything about it, even in Brigid.”

At his request, a conflicted frown appeared on Lucina’s face, her exasperation failing to mask an amused fondness.

“You know we will have to make our way back home eventually, Robin. You cannot run from my father forever,” she settled on responding, keeping her tone mostly neutral, but he knew her well enough by now to pick up on the accusation.

“Yes, dear, I know,” he sighed. “I promise this is the last one. We’ll sail back to Ylisse as soon as we’re done here. It’s probably been long enough by now.” A pause. “Well, Plegia first, maybe. I should probably make sure Morgan hasn’t burned that cesspit to the ground. Anymore than it already was, at least.”

At this Lucina finally drew a little snort, which she immediately attempted to smother, as she always did whenever she attempted to scold him, and he took it as a sign the small rebuke was over. If she had been truly serious in her reproach, she never would have allowed herself even that small slip in composure.

“Come, now, I am sure our daughter is doing a fine job. She was ever so eager to have a proper chance to put her wits at work. You should have more faith in her. Besides, you should not badmouth your country so — especially considering that if you really are so worried, you could have simply gone back to court and done your duty,” she nonetheless insisted, rehashing an old argument with little fervour, but that unmatched stubbornness which seemed unique to the Exalt line. Naga knew he’d fruitlessly tried to beat it out of Chrom enough times.

“Ah, but that would have been far less pleasant a break for us, no ? I would say the past months would have been far less entertaining, educational and, dare I say it, relaxing had we stayed home — and I would say the two of us had earned a little time off from our duties, you most of all.” At this, his smile flickered slightly. “You’re right, though. I promise you, we’ll head back as soon as we’re done sightseeing here.”

He reached for her hand and gave it a quick squeeze, and even that little show of public affection was enough to give her cheeks a healthy blush. Sensing an opportunity to defuse the tension, he gave her a quick grin.

“Although I make no promises on the whole Plegia thing. It’s way too warm, full of people who tried to kill us, also full of people who tried to turn me into an ugly dragon and Ylisse is home anyway. I don’t even want to know how Chrom has been running the country in my absence. Besides it’s not like I was ever officially crowned or even held court once. I’m sure we could just skip a generation and get Morgan to do it.”

At this, she finally let loose a small peal of melodious laughter, much to his delight.

“You are an awful man,” she huffed.

“Don’t you know it ! Now come, Enbarr seems a fine city, so let’s see if we can’t find an inn to your royal tastes.”

* * *

It all began a few months after Robin’s return. Or perhaps it was a month or so prior to the fight with Grima, when all the feelings she had been holding back had been let loose, when she found she could not strike Robin down. It should have been a brief romance, really — they had hardly had the time to explore each other’s feelings before the final fight bore down on them and Robin made the choice to sacrifice himself for all of them. Much as she had hated it, much as she had wanted to hate him for it, she better than all the others had understood why he made it. It had only reaffirmed her admiration for him, really.

And then one day, a whisper on the wind brought Naga’s voice to Chrom, and following it they found Robin and brought him back. The flurry of activity, the celebrations that had followed his return had given them little time to be on their own, but when it finally did, an embarrassing realisation dawned upon them : they had never actually told anyone about the two of them. Oh, a few suspected, definitely (Nowi, Lissa and Cynthia at least, if Robin had to put money on it), but no one outright _knew_.

The problem, however, was that the both of them were slightly… awkward. And, more importantly, feeding off the other’s anxieties, so that when, after a little time spent getting re-acquainted, they should have come forward and probably said something, they didn’t. They told Morgan, who thankfully was at the time off to take charge of Plegia and whose enthusiastic bombast at the news therefore did not break it to everyone within the surrounding area, but no one else. Lucina because she did not really know how to handle such an aspect of her life ; Robin mostly because he was really not looking forward to telling his best friend about courting his daughter.

And so, after months of wracking their brains on how to break it to him, Naga herself must have grown tired of their dithering and did it of her own accord — by means of Chrom barging into Robin’s room unannounced and without knocking, a room which also contained a very disheveled Lucina in a state of not inconsiderable undress. After an awkward discussion which quickly grew into an extremely heated three-way argument, Lucina had stormed out and Robin had followed after her, an exit that Chrom didn’t particularly take well. Tempers being what they were, they decided to take a little break to Plegia to cool off, until they could have a more civilised discussion.

Until Robin and Lucina had realised that they didn’t really like Plegia all that much, and decided that perhaps taking a quick month-long break in Valm would be better. And once in Valm, after visiting some friends, the interesting sights of old Zofia had led them to seek out the sights of old Rigel, and a month turned into two — and didn’t that book mention that Tellius was the home continent of the Radiant Hero ? Surely they could bring back a few stories to Priam ? And you say that judging from where he is said to have left on his wanderings, he probably first arrived in Elibe ? Never heard of that continent, perhaps we should check it out ? And before they knew it, they had payed an Anna most of their remaining gold to navigate them from Pherae through a notoriously treacherous sea known as the Veil of Fódlan, through which a whole other continent was said to be found, one which rarely saw any contact with the rest of the world aside from its immediate neighbours.

And so it was that a year and some change away from their home continent, they’d set foot on Brigid after a nauseatingly terrifying sea voyage, having entrusted another letter delaying their return to the Anna once she’d seen them off. After an enjoyable couple of weeks, they’d grown curious about the mainland, and booked passage to the imperial capital of Enbarr on a merchant ship.

A lengthy trip across most of the known world, which both of them had sorely needed, though neither had dared to voice it out loud — in many ways, their entire memories were composed of times of need and responsibility. Neither had really ever known _how_ to settle down, now that the stakes had been drastically lessened. Robin had spent the peace prior to the Valmese invasion trying to salvage the failing finances of the Ylissean treasury, getting an actual army running again and getting started on rebuilding efforts on the Plegian border. Lucina had spent a fair amount of the time following Grima’s defeat in mourning, and then helping out her father with courtly duties while he, Frederick and Maribelle desperately tried to work out exactly how Robin had kept the halidom running without bankrupting itself. Neither could really remember a time in their life where they had simply settled down, and taken the time to enjoy life.

This trip had done it for them. The guilt they felt at first for being away from their responsibilities slowly morphed into a deep sense of relief and contentment, as they simply took the time to do things they enjoyed and bask in each other’s presence.

Of course, they were both creatures of duty, and Ylisse called to them — but they’d reached a tacit understanding : their stay in Fódlan would be longer than their other ones, without the slight rush of their other travels, but it would be their last stop. One that they hoped would prove a memorable end.

* * *

“Did you spend all day reading again, Robin ?”

“Not _all_ day. I went out by the fish market to explore a little and try out the seafood with an excellent urchin soup, you should try it some time, I’ll give you the address.”

She sighed fondly.

“So you did spend all day cooped up in this chapel, and only went outside to eat at the nearest available location ?” she asked pointedly, her arched eyebrow and skeptical tone making it clear this was not a question so much as a statement.

“… Yes, dear. But now that I finally got them to let me take a look at some of their sacred texts, it’s really fascinating ! There’s some clear discrepancies between what’s taught and what the written evidence suggests…” he began before her hand quickly muffled his mouth.

“And perhaps you will explain it to me somewhere where a priest might not take offence at your blasphemy ?”

Chastened, he could only give her a nod and a sheepish grin. They exited the chapel promptly, Lucina with a polite nod of acknowledgment for the wary priest who had not stopped side-eyeing them throughout their little conversation, Robin with a far more enthusiastic goodbye, excited as he was over the opportunity to study some history. Lucina couldn’t help a little smile at the very much Morgan-like cheery tone in his voice as he blabbered on about small tidbits he’d learned all the way to their inn and through their dinner to their room.

“So can I talk about the even more interesting things now, dear ?” 

She looked at him exasperatedly. He’d practically started bouncing on the spot as soon as she closed the door behind them. If he were a dog, she was fairly sure his tail would be wagging.

“Yes, please do tell me what has you so excited, if only to evacuate that excess energy. This is what you get for staying inside the whole day, you know ?”

“Yes, yes,” the man-child in front of her honest-to-goodness whined. How he managed to revert to a child whenever left to indulge in his scholarly pursuits, she never knew. But then he paused in his excited fidgeting, his brows furrowed in that confused little scrunchy frown they did when a thought came by that stopped him in his tracks. “By the way, is there any reason we couldn’t talk about it on the way back ? No one here seems to speak even a trader’s Archaneian, you know. In fact, it’s surprising how much the language and script have diverged from the rest of the world. I can still trace back the roots of Tellius’ early lingua franca, which does add another point in favour of my — sorry, our — hypothesis about it possibly being humanity’s cradle, but it seems their isolation has led to some drastic differences. I’m glad we got that primer off Anna on the way here, otherwise I feel we’d be rather lost, though probably considerably richer, and that’s to say nothing of Brigid. Come to think of it, that sailor who spoke Fódlani’s accent sounded a lot like Gregor’s, and we don’t know where he’s from, huh ? Skin tone’s not quite there, but he could be half. Something to investigate maybe ? Lucina ? Dear ? Are you still with me ?”

Silence was all that greeted him. Curious, he looked at her, and contrary to his expectations, she didn’t look annoyed at him for going off tangent. No, she seemed to be… blushing ?

“Lucina ?”

No answer.

“Did you forget that no one speaks Archaneian here ?”

Still no answer, as a delighted smile broke onto his face along with a disbelieving chuckle.

“You did, didn’t you ?”

“I— I… merely thought to apply some prudence to our situation. We… can’t know whether anyone around us can understand us, after all, we are in a port, full of travellers who may speak any number of languages, and Naga forbid one of us exercise some basic caution…” she trailed off, still unable to meet his eye and probably aware that her point was lost the moment she attempted to channel Frederick the Wary.

He kept on smiling smugly at her until she broke.

“Yes ! Yes, I did, you insufferable man ! You started criticising a religious text in the middle of a church and by all accounts we have heard these people take their religion very seriously, so yes, I acted rashly. Now will you condemn me as though this was not entirely your fault, or get on with it ?”

“Fine, fine, I will,” he conceded as his chuckles died down. “So according to them, around twelve-hundred years ago, a woman named Seiros was said to have been given a revelation by Sothis, the Goddess who watches over Fódlan, then started performing miracles, and a church was founded to venerate her, the Church of Seiros, the one they told us about on the way here. Also, they apparently hate outsiders, so we have our work cut out for us, by the way. So she hangs around for a bit, until the first Emperor of Adrestia decides he wants to unite the continent — and doesn’t that bring back uncomfortable memories — except she’s apparently not stopping him, but in fact outright helps him fight the leader of his opposition, some guy named Nemesis and together they unite the continent, pretty much under the church.”

He took a quick pause to breathe, and noticed Lucina looked rather like she was wondering what she was supposed to find fascinating in all this.

“I’m getting to it, dear, I promise. See, what I first found odd was the dates they gave - there’s almost a hundred and fourty years between Saint Seiros’s first recorded appearance and her battle with Nemesis. So I thought that was a bit odd, because holy or not, most of us die well before that age. So I asked the priest if they had any representations, and lo and behold, it turns out that she’s constantly represented as green-haired. So by then, everything points towards her being a dragon of some kind, and that’s only compounded by the fact that, would you believe it, the nobility around here are all supposedly descended from her entourage from back then and all have “crests”, marks granted by the Goddess or Seiros herself — it’s not clear — to her most loyal followers and from which they seemingly draw some extra powers, inherited by their descendants. Sound familiar ?” he added, pointedly staring at her left eye. “It sounds a lot like the history of Jugdral that I got my hands on back when we were in Ostia, to be honest, what with the holy warriors defeating a great menace with powers granted from their divine patrons, to be passed on through their bloodlines as they parcel off the continent for them to rule over. But the funny thing is, throughout this, I’ve never found a single mention of manaketes. Or dragons. Nothing, not even a poor single isolated Laguz.”

Lucina felt her interest piqued as Robin finally reached his point. That _was_ indeed odd. This pretty much sounded like it could have been Naga and Tiki under different names, and had the telltale traces of draconic intervention all over it. She was on her part immediately reminded of the tales they’d heard in Zofia about their old goddess Mila and her own church.

“Right ?” Robin continued excitedly, catching the drift of her thoughts. “Closest I can find is a reference to a beast known as the Immaculate One, which clearly sounds like a dragon, but not even named as that. Also, I think from the context that that might have been Seiros herself, but I’m not totally sold on that yet ? Anyway,” he pursued as out of seemingly nowhere he earnestly grabbed both her hands and stared into her eyes, little sparks of excitement dancing through his pupils. “I think this continent is secretly run by a cabal of at least a divine dragon and probably some manaketes through the Church of Seiros, Nemesis was probably an earth dragon gone mad like Medeus and _doesn’t this just sound fascinating_ ?”

There was an expectant pause, as he clearly expected an enthusiastic agreement from her. Instead, Lucina took back one of her hands and began kneading her temples.

“Sometimes, Robin, you are more like Morgan than you know. What you are telling me is that a powerful being, most likely a divine dragon, has been keeping this continent in the dark for over a thousand years as to its existence and has all but subverted its political leadership under its aegis by getting the population to worship them ?”

“Yes ?”

“And, knowing you, you intend to walk to this church’s leadership and basically ask them if that is indeed true ?”

“Well, if you put it like that, anything will sound bad. I just haven’t yet worked out the kinks in how to do that, is all.”

“And this is not simply a case of you getting too excited and not thinking it through ?”

The guilty silence which followed told her everything she needed to know, and she allowed herself a moment to revel in this little reversal of their earlier situation.

“Robin ?”

“Fine, take the wind out of my sails, will you ?” he sighed, seemingly deflating on the spot. “This is probably not the wisest move, but think about how much knowledge they must have hoarded up ! Manakete tribes are all but disappeared nowadays, Nowi’s over a thousand years old and she barely remembers the last enclaves !”

“And what will become of our vacation when we are too busy running for our lives after they see us as attempting to expose their secrets ?”

At that, he gave a guilty wince.

“I suppose it would get considerably… _less_ pleasant.”

“Which I seem to recall was meant to be the whole point of this last endeavour of ours ?”

“… Yes.” Oh, he was sulking now.

“For that matter, while what you have found appears rather conclusive, how do you know that they are still around ? For all we know, they have left this church to fend for its own and gone off alone.” There, she finally had him — oh no why was he perking right back up.

“I’m glad you asked ! See, when that priest first mentioned that all the representations of Seiros and the Goddess had her with green hair, I asked if that shade was common, because I knew a couple of priestesses of our own backwater cult who had the same shade and wasn’t it just a funny coincidence, and he mentioned that funnily enough, it was both the current Archbishop and her Head Advisor’s hair colour — an Archbishop who is apparently notable for having been the very picture of Saint Seiros in her youth, and who sounds remarkably well-preserved for her age, if I’m lining the descriptions I got and the dates right.”

“… I’ll admit, the evidence sounds pretty damning, but I still see little reason to involve ourselves in this save satiating your thirst for knowledge and dragon lore — the latter of which could easily be mostly addressed by Lady Tiki and Nowi, I should add.”

Once again, most of the enthusiasm bled from his frame.

“Fine, I admit it’s unlikely to give us the rest we wanted,” and she could almost hear a sudden thought appearing in his head halfway through the sentence, “but hear me out : we need the local Anna to get us out, yes ?”

“The Anna from the boat did say we’d struggle to find anyone else who could navigate the Veil, much less with guaranteed success.”

“Well, she also mentioned that there was only one Anna in Fódlan, and that she lived in Garreg Mach, in the Oghma mountains ?”

“Yes …?”

“It just so happens that Garreg Mach Monastery is the headquarters of the Church of Seiros and the seating place of the current Archbishop !” he concluded, seemingly unaware that she was currently having to restrain herself from strangling him.

“I fail to see how that means we have to go out of our way to talk to her,” she managed through gritted teeth, letting her frustration with him show.

“Well, here’s the thing : we blew a lot of our remaining money in Brigid and booking the passage to here, and we’ll likely blow through more traveling. I can’t imagine that even penny-pinching and taking escort jobs for caravans when it comes to travel, we’ll have much left in our purses by the time we get to Garreg Mach.”

“Get to the point, Robin,” she sighed exasperatedly.

“I’ve already made my point though ?”

“What, that we will be hurting for funds by the time we return home ?”

“No, that we’re going to be asking an Anna for a sizeable favour with too light a purse.”

He let that sentence and its obvious implications settle in. They’d long since leveraged any wiggle-room they could out of the favours the Anna network owed them.

“We could travel more frugally and cut our stay short ?” offered Lucina, wincing at the very thought. It wasn’t that she couldn’t do it — all the future children knew how to survive off the strict minimum the land could offer. But this was supposed to be a pleasant stay, and after years of privations, she’d grown a certain fondness for some of life’s baser comforts.

“Not only would that be horribly unpleasant and defeat the point of this little trip, I’m not even sure it would be enough. I do have, however, an alternate proposition,” he chanced, tensing slightly as she narrowed her eyes at him.

“One which coincidentally has us talk to the Archbishop, I imagine ?” she pointed out, unamused, before relaxing. “Well, let us at least hear it.”

“Here’s my counter point : as I’ve mentioned and you’ve probably noticed, people around here are pretty hostile towards outsiders, and I can’t imagine we’d have an easy time finding decent income on our trip. So instead of ruining our trip with subpar living, we blow everything on the slow way to Garreg Mach. I’m talking a nice little tour of the continent, through the Empire, the Kingdom and the Alliance, good accommodations, maybe a couple of escort missions to replenish the funds if they’re not too bothersome and take us where we want to go ; just you, me, the sights and some nice easy living for a little while, how does that sound ?” he asked her, having sat by her on the bed, voice so sweet she could have fed it to Gaius.

“Like you are trying to bribe me,” she answered archly, but her smile betrayed her approval. “And possibly succeeding, though that is contingent on the second part of this plan of yours.”

“Well, I learnt something else interesting about Garreg Mach, which could very well be key to our monetary situation. Did you know that the monastery also runs the Garreg Mach Officer’s Academy, where the finest flowers of Fódlan’s nobility come to learn the skills expected of them ? Combat, tactics, diplomacy, management…”

“You cannot be serious.”

‘You didn’t even hear me out !”

“What even makes you think they would hire two unknown strangers ? One of which is apparently planning on calling out their millennia-long bluff, apparently ?”

“Ah but see, I wouldn’t need to do it then, because if I were faculty I’m sure I’d get a decent access to their library !”

“You still want to do it.”

“… Granted. But it’s not a necessity. Besides, who could rival us as teachers ? I was the royal preceptor to House Lowell, am a tactical savant and administrative genius —”

“Humble, too.”

“Oh, shush, I saw the mess you lot made of my accounting when I came back, and I’m amazed the castle was still standing. Honestly, I thought Frederick would manage to accidentally sell Themis to finance a year-long festival in Chrom and Lissa’s honour, complete with giant anatomically correct bronze statues,” he dismissed airily.

“… That example sounds concerning, and I find it oddly specific. Surely Frederick, while his devotion can be slightly… uncomfortable at times, would never be quite so gauche ?”

“… Did we never tell you about the posters ? How ? Wait, never you mind, story for another time, on top of all this —”

“Hold on, Robin. I do not recall you ever being the royal preceptor, especially considering my younger self should have barely started her lessons.”

“Well I haven’t _been_ yet, but I _will_ be — I was your preceptor in the future, after all, no ? No reason I won’t be again. And I clearly did a great job, so my competence is not in doubt !”

“A creative reinterpretation of the truth, that,” she challenged, her lips quirking into a half-smile despite her best efforts. When he got like this, it was always hard not to get sucked into his rhythm. “Not to mention you seem a bit too sure father will let you near his easily impressionable daughters…” and didn’t that draw a wince from him.

“Point taken. However, as I was saying, in addition to my not inconsiderable talents, you are one of the finest sword hands in the world, and I’d say I’ve met quite a few noteworthy ones,” and Naga but he loved the blush that drew from her. “Not to mention, how many of the people here, what with their isolationist tendencies, do you reckon have experience with international diplomacy ? And that’s disregarding our vast wealth of knowledge of the outside world that these people quite shockingly just completely lack. I’d say that’s a few feathers in our caps, no ?”

Throughout the conversation, he’d gotten closer and closer to her, and by now he was basically whispering in her ear. At this point, there was hardly a point to continuing this discussion.

“I suppose the idea has some merit,” she admitted, leaning into his touch. “Now hold me, you insufferable man.”

“As you wish, lady Lowell,” he answered with an impish smile and hunger in his eyes.

They did not talk much for the rest of the night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was longer than expected, and also the end of my very short backlog as I ended up stitching chapter 2 and 3 together as I figured it flowed better. Hope it's not too hard to digest. Also plot actually happens ! Or at least the groundwork for it. Enjoy !

Scheming was an expensive pastime. A good scheme needs a significant investment to even get started : a cost in human resources, because people needed to come up with it. Any good scheme also needed a fair amount of time sunk into it, to keep it from becoming a half-cocked, ham-fisted mockery of the art. Sometimes it cost clout ; sometimes it cost favours. 

Claude knew how to keep those costs down : by working alone and informing no one, the only thing his schemes regularly cost him were time. But no matter the difficulties he’d encountered in his life, he’d also grown up a noble, first in Almyra and then in the Alliance. And as he was finding out, there was also a significantly higher than he’d presumed cost to acquiring materials, especially when one had an interest in poisons and their antidotes. 

It was not the first time he’d snuck out to acquire some questionable items, but he’d definitely underestimated how well-stocked a pantry a dedicated team of servants with adequate funding and, more importantly, established suppliers could maintain. He really should have asked the monastery staff for tips, but hadn’t wanted to give anyone any hints as to what he might be looking for. 

If he’d dared, could he have avoided this situation ? Probably.

The situation in question was really not that bad, all told, but there was something about how satisfied this Anna merchant had looked when she’d tripped him up into admitting that he probably couldn’t get half the things he was looking for elsewhere that was incredibly grating.

Possibly because he’d been outsmarted.

Anyway, to get back to his point about costs, he was now paying through the roof for a lot of things he really wanted, simply because she knew he couldn’t go elsewhere. Parting reluctantly with a much bigger portion of his gold than he’d anticipated, he watched with stupefaction as the merchant nuzzled the purse, cooing at it lovingly. 

He liked to think he’d seen a lot when it came to human vice, but such naked greed was definitely a first.

Frustrated as he was by her obnoxious behaviour, he had to admit she had style, though he couldn’t imagine how anyone could stand her for an extended period of time.

Which made it all the more surprising when the door suddenly burst open and along with it came a loud, bombastic greeting full of friendly cheer.

“Ah, is there as blessed a sight as an Anna and her recently acquired money ? Truly, a vision for sore eyes after the trip up the mountains !” The person who’d swaggered in, a nondescript young man with white hair and a heavy well-worn coat, then had the gall to turn and wink at him. “Don’t feel too bad, mister, you’ve lost a bout to the best in business, and I can assure you it happens to the best of us !”

Something about this stranger immediately raised his hackles — his overly friendly and debonair appearance (which looked a lot like a behaviour he would himself play up to keep people on their toes), the way his eyes immediately scanned the room upon entering, the fact that while his body seemed to disappear into his coat he most definitely had a warrior’s gait, his slight foreign accent he couldn’t place and the surprise exhibited by Anna at his sight, though she quickly mastered it as she broke into an equally enthusiastic greeting ; nothing seemed quite right with him.

“Welcome to Anna’s General Store ! Seeing as you seem in the mood to flatter me, you wouldn’t happen to know the best way to do it, would you ?” she chirped, eyes glinting, and her smile was all teeth now, like a wyvern expecting feeding time.

Was it him or was there a slight intonation in the way she’d pronounced her name that wasn’t there before ? 

He didn’t have time to ponder that, however, as another stranger came through the door, much more sedately this time, and this one made no effort hide her martial nature. Under a heavy travel cloak, she wore some light armour which had clearly seen some use, on top of clothing he recognised as light and practical enough for combat, yet too fine to be a mere mercenary’s, despite the wear it was showing. She also visibly carried two swords, one of which appeared to be a fancy, impractical-looking ornamented one and more bizarrely wore a strange mask which obscured her eyes.

He was wholly unsurprised to feel curiosity win out over defiance in his mind and push him to stay in the store.

“Ah, Anna then,” the stranger replied as though he hadn’t just named her upon entering… but didn’t he just use that odd intonation as well ? “I’m afraid my companion and I are currently rather short on funds — but fear not ! We don’t intend to remain penniless for long, and did you know that once we’ve replenished our coffers, we are planning to spend…” and now he was leaning over her counter, voice drifting to what sounded disturbingly like a husky, seductive whisper, ignoring how the merchant’s face had closed up as soon as he’d mentioned his lack of means. “Every. Single. Coin. On. You ?”.

Claude had to confess to being impressed. He sounded somehow both sleazy and shady as hell and yet he could swear that… Hook ?

“That’s what they always say, buster. How can a girl take you at your pretty word, though ?”

“Well, I’m a friend of Anna, so I’m sure she’ll vouch for me, considering I am probably her single biggest client, but I’ve also done good business with Anna, Anna, Anna and Anna,” he listed as though that made any sense, but Claude could swear there was the _slightest_ difference to the way he pronounced each name, “bought countless supplies from quite a few other of the Sellers, and most recently hired Anna to bring us into Brigid, she’s actually the one who gave us your address.”

That whole speech meant utterly nothing to Claude, though he filed away their mention of traveling to Brigid carefully — foreigners were rare, but foreigners who get around even more so — as well as the fact that there were possibly multiple… Annas ? Was that a codename ? Were they a merchant network ? A spy network ? He should probably investigate that later. However little it might have meant to him, though, that merchant was suddenly clearly more interested.

Line, then.

“From out the Veil ? Oh, you must be Robin and Lucina then ! A pleasure to meet such regular customers ! Anna sent word you’d be coming in eventually to book passage out !”

Mostly forgotten in his corner of the shop, Claude reeled back in surprise. They were from outside the Veil ? No one tried to sail past the Veil ! Sure, some sailors mentioned managing to go there and back and spoke of strange lands and strange people, and he’d heard enough of those stories sneaking out to the docks in Derdriu to figure there must be some kernel of truth to that idea, but it was always on accident or on foolish dares ! The waters were too treacherous to cross reliably !

And this merchant could apparently ferry people through it. Well, then. He immediately revised his estimation of her capabilities upwards — if she could operate such a smuggling operation right under the nose of the Church and her xenophobic leadership, well… Maybe a contact to keep in mind — or a danger to watch closely.

In the meantime, Anna and the foreigners had switched to another language which he did not recognise, though he was fairly sure he could hear a vague similarity to Fódlani here and there (and that Anna shopkeep seemed to speak it fluently — curiouser and curiouser). Even without understanding their words, however, he could tell she’d swallowed the sinker, and they were currently haggling about price considering her wicked grin and the two traveller’s winces.

They must have come to an agreement, since they shook on it and their frenzied arguing regained the tone of their earlier friendly banter. The shopkeep who most definitely wasn’t a simple shopkeep then asked them a question, and whatever the answer was must have been hilarious considering she exploded into a flurry of mad cackles, before switching back to Fódlani.

“Well, you’re in luck, kids ! The young man who’s trying very hard to be sneaky over there is actually a student at Garreg Mach, and one better, he’s a House Leader — basically a student representative, think of it sort of like a Prefect at the Arcanum back in Ylisse. So if you want a meeting with the Archbishop or Seteth, the advisor, I’m sure he could take you there ?”

And now those strangers wanted to meet with Rhea and Seteth ? Why ? What could a couple of travellers planning to leave through the Veil possibly want from the Archbishop ? He felt like he was caught in the middle of a story whose beginning he’d missed.

On the other hand… wasn’t this the perfect opportunity to investigate ?

“While I _could_ do this… I could hardly waltz into a meeting with her to introduce some strangers I know nothing about just on their say-so I’m afraid, no matter how friendly they may be,” he concluded with a practiced apologetic shrug, fluidly inserting himself into the conversation and offering them to take the lead.

_Now, let’s see where they take this_.

To his surprise, however, it was the still-laughing Anna who answered him, rather than the seemingly vexed strangers.

“Ah, but they don’t just want to meet her on a lark, kid ! Our two _esteemed_ friends here,” and the emphasis she put on the word made it sound like there was clearly a joke he wasn’t getting there, though not a malicious one, “intend to earn their pay for my services by _teaching_. They want to apply to become professors at the Academy !”

With her piece delivered, she collapsed into another fit of manic giggling, ignoring the annoyed growl from the masked woman and Claude’s naked confusion.

“You know,” the man — Robin — began as he ruefully shook his head, “a man here could get offended at how amusing you find this situation. Surely we don’t look so incapable, do we ?”

That last question was directed at him, accompanied by a harmless, self-depreciating smile that Claude did not trust for an instant. So of course he imitated it right away to reply in kind.

“Well, I wouldn’t know about talent, I just coast by on my roguish good looks and natural charm, but your lovely lady friend here at the very least seems to know how to handle herself ?”

“She IS lovely, isn’t she ?” he immediately agreed, drawing a noise from the woman (Lucina, was it ?) that Claude placed halfway between a murderous growl and a mortified squeal. If he was any judge of character, he’d wager on an embarrassed lover, then. “Anyhow, I can assure you it’s not our credentials that will cause problems, and besides I’m sure our good friend Anna here can at the very least back us up on those and the fact that we can be trusted with noble kids !” he added, eyes twinkling as the shopkeep struggled to contain her laughter.

The masked woman was doing a valiant impression of a marble statue, but her stoic bearing somehow reminded him more of someone screaming in embarrassment.

What a bizarre afternoon this was becoming.

“In fact,” Robin picked up, pausing carefully and leaning forward as though he was ready to part with a great secret, “one could even say I’m an expert at _herding_ them !”

Anna, who’d managed to get herself under control, lost it and started laughing madly again. Lucina gave up her statue impression to hide her face in her hands. Robin looked very satisfied with himself, for what was probably some kind of pun that had completely flown over Claude’s head.

A bizarre afternoon indeed.

Lucina was the first to collect her bearings, shrugging off the moment with what he could only assume was force of habit, and seemingly decided to steer the conversation towards a more productive end, turning to him.

“My partner’s frivolous attempts at humour aside, we would greatly appreciate your assistance in guiding us to the Monastery and communicating our desire for a meeting to the Archbishop or her advisor, sir…” she trailed off, likely realising they hadn’t even asked for his name yet.

“Claude von Riegan, leader of the Golden Deer house, at your service, miss… Lucina, was it ?” he obliged, favouring her with a little mock bow and a wink.

“Truly ? My apologies, I was unaware proper courtesies might be required already,” she demurred, letting nothing more than a little surprise show in her voice before giving him a perfect courtly bow. Her Fódlani was slightly more accented than her partner’s. “I am Lucina of House Lowell, from the Halidom of Ylisse. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Well, he had them pegged as an eccentric foreign noble and his retainer, but judging by her manners and the fact that she just sounded like a pretty important person, maybe that Robin guy she seemed to be following was way more important than he thought ?

“And my companion here is —”

“Robin the foundling, retainer, advisor, steward, bodyguard, preceptor and all-around go-to guy to House Lowell, pleasure to meet you !” interrupted the man, and once again Claude was forced to revise his assessment of the situation on the fly.

So he was in her employ ? He’d gotten that completely wrong ? Besides, while he imagined there was a fair bit of self-aggrandisement to Robin’s words, he still sounded fairly important, so what was he doing off traveling ? For that matter, why was there just two of them ? Where was Ylisse ? How was nobility back there, that they would just allow these two to roam around unsupervised ?

Or maybe… they hadn’t been allowed ? Robin did say he was a foundling, and surely a match between the two would not meet the standards of the local nobility… Was he witnessing the impossible ? One of Ingrid’s sappy romances come to life, complete with the noble maiden running away with a ruffian ? 

_What is going on with those two ?_

Heedless of Claude’s desperate scrambling to keep up with all the information he was receiving, the other two had carried on.

“Robin, I beg of you, will you please at the very least attempt to conduct yourself with a minimum of decorum while we are here ? And if you insist on giving yourself such titles, I will not hesitate to introduce you as Robin of Plegia to the next person we meet.”

“Now, dear, let’s not be hasty… Surely it’s nothing so dire ?”

“Would you prefer Robin Solidor then ?” she countered, and drew a wince from him.

“Point taken, dear, I promise I’ll try and be on my best behaviour when we meet the Archbishop.”

Well, these two were clearly up to something (and that Robin was apparently not a simple foundling, then). He couldn’t get a clear read of them. He knew nothing of their backgrounds.

Something told him that no one else would fare any better with them.

Trust them ? Definitely not. Count on them to throw an unexpected wrench in whatever Edelgard’s, Rhea’s and who knows who else’s plans might be ? Something told him he could rely on them for that.

Chaos, after all, was his playground.

“Well, Lady Lowell, Sir Robin, it would be my pleasure to lead you to the Monastery, if you’ll only follow me,” he said, and his smile showed teeth.

* * *

Seteth found his face firmly stuck in a frown as he awaited Garreg Mach’s latest two visitors.

When the young von Riegan had requested a meeting, he’d expected some asinine complaints about discipline standards, or yet another attempt at arguing for a more lenient curfew. Instead, he was treated to a fantastical story about two foreigners who apparently, of all things, intended to apply for tenure just so they could earn money to pay for their way home.

He’d have scoffed at the claim and not even entertained them, but that Anna merchant who apparently vouched for them had a good reputation, and Claude also seemed to believe they were, at the very least, more than a simple pair of travellers, though he seemed as skeptical as him of their intentions. 

For all his flaws and frustrating behaviour, no one could deny the Deer’s leader was a shrewd judge of character.

His musings were interrupted by a single sharp rap on the door, the only warning Rhea gave him before letting herself in.

“Rhea ? What are you doing here ? I know I sent Cyril to notify you, but I did not think the matter would be worth your time. Has something happened ?”

“Peace, Seteth,” she replied. “I was supposed to meet with Father Eadwig, but it seems the Western Church has grown bolder than we’d thought, as he never made it. Shamir found out that he left town shortly after receiving my summons.”

They shared a worried frown at this. There had been growing whispers of discontent from the Western Church as of late, but this sort of blatant snub was a sudden escalation neither had anticipated.

“Nonetheless, a worry for another time, once Shamir has found out more. I’ve sent her to tail him. As I found myself unoccupied, I figured I ought to see just who those two brazen strangers were. At the very least, this is probably the most interesting application we’ve ever received.”

“A fair point,” he snorted, “but I cannot help but be worried. Are they really from beyond the Veil ? It seems too fantastical to believe.”

“It is not impossible, but I am also doubtful. It sounds conveniently unverifiable. I suppose we shall have to judge for ourselves — I can hear footsteps,” she warned him.

True to her words, a few seconds later he could hear people arriving in front of the door, and after a polite knock one of the Knights opened it.

“Archbishop, Lord Seteth,” he nodded respectfully to each. “The two visitors you asked me to bring up ?”

“Let them in.”

The words had barely left his mouth that a very excited young man had all but stormed into the room, looking around curiously at everything in sight. That excitement, however, paled in comparison to the almost childlike glee that lit up in his in his eyes at their sight.

“Ah, you must be the Archbishop and advisor I have heard so much about ! It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last,” he exclaimed happily, before giving them a quick once-over. “Unmistakeable indeed !” he added, and there was a small amused tinge to that last comment that immediately put Seteth on edge.

There had been a joke, there, that he had not been privy to, and he was not sure it was a mere comment on their distinct appearances.

He was immediately comforted in his wariness when he felt Rhea also stiffen almost imperceptibly next to him while the second person, a masked woman of proud bearing, filed into the room with an apologetic look on her face.

They had many enemies to whom they would be unmistakeable, after all.

He let himself fade slightly and allowed Rhea to take the lead. This was going to be a tricky conversation, and those were best handled by her. He was never one for subtlety.

“Indeed, though it seems you have us at a disadvantage, as I’m afraid we had not heard of you prior to this afternoon,” she began. “You are Lucina Lowell and Robin, then, who claim to be from beyond the Veil ?”

At the door, the knight lingered at the frame and gave him a questioning look. While basic pleasantries were exchanged, he pondered the situation for a moment before giving him a quick shake of the head and a pointed look at the door.

Get out and close the door, but stand guard and stay alert. No trouble expected, but the possibility exists.

He picked the conversation back up just as introductions were concluded. Whilst only half-listening, he’d not picked up anything that the young von Riegan hadn’t more or less told him. Time to intervene and play his role, then.

“Before we begin, it seems to me rather rude for you to stay masked if you have nothing to hide,” he bluntly told the woman, figuring her for the least crafty of the two. “Or are manners so poor beyond the Veil that one need not bother to let their interlocutor see their face ?”

If the woman took any offence to his words, she did not let any of it show.

“Of course, my apologies. It simply has proven easier during our travels, to avoid certain questions. You see,” she began as she reached to her face to remove it, “to put it simply, while Crests as they are understood by the Fódlani do not exist in Ylisse, some bloodlines do carry brands, which are usually the sign of a pact made with a powerful being — almost always a Divine Dragon. They do not bestow any power on us as Crests do, but they do act as a visual confirmation of our covenants. The Brand of the Exalt in my left eye may not be a Crest, but it does look like one to the uninformed, and it has proven easier on the road to keep it hidden than to answer any questions.”

Silence was the only thing followed her declaration, as she revealed her rather fair face and, as promised, the sigil in her left eye.

And here he was worried he’d have to pry details out of them, when they’d gone straight for the heresy. And, more importantly, when they had hinted straight away at dragons.

Still, better keep to his role for now. Let Rhea decide if or when they had to stop being coy.

“You claim to bear the Goddess’ favour ?”

And if his outrage was only partly faked, well, they should have come with a more believable story.

Unfortunately, that was seemingly as long as her companion could stay quiet.

“Well, technically, a goddess, the Divine Dragon Naga, no relation that I know of to the Sothis you worship,” he interjected, before an enthusiasm he was already beginning to grow weary of found its way to his face again. 

“Though you do raise a very interesting question — what _do_ we qualify as a God ? We worship Naga, yet she is not our creator, nor our ancestor. She did not create the lands or the people that walk them. But she has been alive for thousands upon thousands of years, has transcended the need for a physical form, hears our prayers when we voice them, watches over our countries and empowers our champions in time of need, and of the Divine Dragons that once all but inherited the entire world, she is said to be the greatest.

“She may not be The Goddess, but would you not, too, call her a goddess ?”

The silence this time was not an astonished one — well, not entirely. There was fury, at the casual disrespect towards their mother, simmering in his and Rhea’s core in unison. But most of all, there was a sudden tension as they both realised that for all the nonsense he had just spoken, he had implied a familiarity with dragons that went beyond tall tales and doctrines.

Though they had called themselves Nabateans, dragons were what their mother had called them.

Rhea had already dropped her amiable mask, though she still chose to play the Archbishop.

“Is this the purpose of your visit, then ? To insult our beliefs, a millennia of tradition, while you come begging for scraps ? Surely you cannot think such impudence would be welcome,” she growled.

Before this Robin could answer, his companion whacked him behind the head and quickly gave the both of them an apologetic half-bow, taking a conciliatory tone.

“My apologies for Robin’s behaviour, Lady Rhea, Sir Seteth. I am afraid he is a historian at heart, and his passion for the subject often overcomes his common sense, or his manners. It was not our intent to offend, nor do we seek any confrontations. Robin has simply been looking forward to discussing comparative theology with you, and let his enthusiasm take over. 

“I hope you can forgive him for his lack of decorum, as I assure you _it will not happen again_ ,” she concluded, pointedly glaring at the white-haired man. 

He at the very least had the good grace to look contrite.

“Ah, yes, of course, my apologies Lady Rhea. It’s simply that I have been immensely curious about the Church of Seiros ever since arriving on this continent, but I’ve had to keep my questions to myself in order to avoid causing too much of a fuss — the excitement of meeting someone who might be able to answer my questions overcame me, I’m afraid.”

Rhea let them stew in it for a few seconds, before gracing them with a forgiving nod, her face still an impassive mask.

“Very well, I shall forgive you this once. I would advise you, however, not to let it happen again. Others may not be as forgiving as I.”

There was another tense instant following her declaration, as the two visitors acknowledged it and everyone remained stuck on the defensive. 

Seteth supposed it was up to him to clear the air slightly then.

“Perhaps, before we discuss more personal matters, we might settle the core issue that any future collaboration might rely on ? I am told, after all, that you seek work here as instructors. There is little point in continuing this discussion if you do not meet the standards required of our educators, after all.”

The barest of grateful looks flickered through Rhea’s eyes at his words. After all, the easiest way to get rid of these two was to declare them not worth their time.

The way Robin’s face lit up once again quickly disabused him of the notion this would be easily done.

“I’m glad you asked !”

Twenty minutes into a lecture on estate management and asset acquisition, they called in Manuela. Hanneman arrived halfway through the lecture on the finer points of cross-continental supply trains.

By the time they were discussing naval warfare, Hanneman was taking notes and muttering to himself about cross-checking some research.

* * *

Lucina was more than glad to see the other two professors file out of the room.

Not because they had been bad company (though she had been quick to make it clear to that Manuela woman that her lover was very much _not_ on the market), but as endearing as she usually found Robin’s endless litany of enlightening musings on just about any subject, the current situation was far too tense for his antics and the last thing he needed was two enablers.

They could both tell that this had been an attempt at tripping them over and showing them door.

They’d expected some measure of defiance, some wariness, but certainly not to this extent. When they’d begun their meeting, their body language had been guarded. Within a minute of Robin opening his big mouth, they’d looked ready to draw arms.

Thankfully, her intervention had smoothed things over somewhat, but both the Archbishop and her advisor conveyed still conveyed extreme wariness. At the very least, though, Robin’s little performance had gotten rid of their skepticism.

This was still looking like an increasingly bad idea.

Once Hanneman had reluctantly exited, not before extracting a promise from the two of them to absolutely come visit for tea even should they not be taken on, the tense, leaden silence from before fell upon them once more.

Outside, the sun had clearly begun to set.

Robin, for all his goodwill, was needlessly grating to those who already had reason to dislike him. The Archbishop might as well have been made of marble. Seteth seemed to be her version of Frederick.

None of the three were going to clear the air here, so she supposed it fell to her.

Naga preserve her for the teasing she was going to get from Robin for this, though.

“Perhaps we have gotten off on the wrong foot,” she began. “While I can certainly understand your suspicions regarding us and our… unique provenance, we are not asking you for an undue amount of your trust. We would of course be fine with being actively supervised during our stay here, if it would please you, until such a time as you believe it no longer necessary or our employment comes at an end.”

No answer, but she could tell she had piqued the Archbishop’s curiosity — possibly. She was incredibly controlled, and Lucina was never the best at reading emotions.

Seteth countered her instantly nonetheless.

“You could well be offering such a thing because you know you would be able to evade it.”

“Of course. Consider this merely a preliminary concession to help restart our talk in a more auspicious manner.”

She took his reluctant grunt as an agreement of sorts.

Time for the tough part, now.

She couldn’t believe she was going to do exactly what she’d told Robin not to. 

Inhale, and be ready to bolt.

“It seems to me that some of the things we have said have put you on your guard ; as this was not our intention, and in the interest of transparency and honesty, allow us to clear the air as to your likely suspicions ? I feel as though it will be impossible to maintain a working relationship otherwise.”

The two ecclesiastics immediately tensed and looked ready for a fight, but allowed her to continue when she went against all the instincts ingrained in her and raised her hands away from her weapon.

Robin, on the other hand, looked immensely betrayed, as he’d probably figured out what she was about to do.

“We already strongly suspect that the two of you are manaketes, or some manner of dragon-kin. Also,” she added to Rhea, rushing to finish her sentence before the two recovered from their shock, “that you are most likely either Seiros or a close relative.”

She had barely finished that Rhea had leapt out of her chair, all pretence of softness forgotten, a spell already forming on her lips while Seteth drew an axe he’d concealed behind his desk.

Well, then.

Above all else, stay calm, and keep your hands off your weapon. Thankfully, it looked like Robin had gotten the memo, and he stayed carefully put, never losing his air of carefree confidence.

“Wait ! I promise you, we have no quarrel with you. I beseech you to simply listen to us ! We are not interested in the local politics, or in the way you run Fódlan, or in interfering with whatever you have going on with this church, I swear !”

For an unbearable instant, it looked as though they would attack anyway, but eventually the tiniest of nods from Rhea invited her to go on. Still not lowering their weapons, though.

“How ?” And no matter how intimidating her aspect, or how commanding her tone, she could not hide the shake in her voice. Maybe that had hit a bit closer than she’d meant to.

Thankfully, she had the ideal weapon to defuse tension.

“Honestly, it’s because you have hair like Tiki’s !”

Seteth and Rhea both jumped slightly, not having expected Robin to crow happily as though everything were fine.

“… Tiki ? What ?”

“See, remember when I mentioned about how our local goddess was a dragon named Naga ? Well, Naga has a daughter called Tiki, who is known as her Voice in the physical world, because not everyone is a Lowell and gets to commune with Naga occasionally. She’s also a good friend of ours, is three thousand years old, and has hair the same colour as you and Seteth here. I asked her about it once, because two other Manakete we know, Nowi and Nah, also have very similar hair, and she mentioned it was pretty common — apparently Naga and some other divine dragons like Duma and Mila had a similar colour, and I’ve never really seen its like on any full-blooded human.”

The two looked dumbstruck.

“You worked all this out… Because of our _hair_?”

“Well, not only, it was just the clincher. I got suspicious when I saw that Seiros was well over a hundred by the time she — well, you — was supposed to have fought Nemesis, and your Crests sound a whole lot like something from a continent called Jugdral, where twelve Divine Dragons empowered twelve heroes to fight back against a mad emperor and blessed their bloodlines with a brand, plus a couple of other details that stuck out really.”

There was more stunned silence, before, after a quick look at Seteth, Rhea finally sat back down.

“Perhaps you should continue. It seems there is much we may learn from each other, after all.”

* * *

The rest of the meeting was honestly rather anticlimactic, in that it was extremely short. Rhea had duties to see to, and the rest of the time was spent sorting out another appointment for tomorrow with Seteth for the real discussion on top of sorting out their lodgings for the night.

Just as they were about to take their leave and a well-earned breather, however, Seteth’s voice rang out one last time.

“One last moment, if you please.”

So close.

“It has just occurred to me that while Sir Robin here has… eagerly demonstrated what he hopes to bring to the Academy, you yourself have not expressed any preferences, Lady Lowell. Am I to assume you intend to act as his assistant ?”

Oh. Right. Teaching. That was a thing they had discussed.

“While I have received a thorough instruction in such subjects and am no stranger to both the conduct of war and the affairs of peacetime, I fear there is little I could contribute there that could not be covered Robin. I am, however, fairly confident in my sword hand, and would gladly instruct the students in the subject,” she chanced.

“Lucina is too humble to brag, so I’ll do it for her, but what she means by that is that sword in hand she is near unmatched across at least two whole continents and your students can learn more from her in a year than they probably will from a whole life under someone else’s tutoring,” Robin interjected, ruining her attempt at not drawing too much attention.

And Naga damn the pleased blush the compliment drew from her — just because she’d put her mask back on did not mean she couldn’t feel it.

“Well, we already have a perfectly capable combat instructor, but perhaps Jeritza could use someone else to cover for individual tutoring… His skill is without question, but his manner with the students can leave a lot to be desired…” admitted Seteth, though a healthy note of skepticism coloured his tone at her supposed prowess. 

“Besides, I do suppose you would make quite the pair. He also always wears a mask,” and at the quip a rare note of humour entered his voice. “Hmm. If we move along now, we might catch the tail end of his session with the Blue Lions. Perhaps you might give us a demonstration of your skill then ?”

Lucina exchanged a quick look with Robin, who gave her a quick smile and a little squeeze of her hand. _Up to you_.

Well, she was owed some stress relief after the day she’d had.

“Lead the way, then, Advisor.”

Hopefully she would not make a fool of herself.

“You know,” Robin said casually as they set out, “she’s also an excellent pegasus rider and a deft hand with the lance. She just has a massive complex about it because her mother, her sister and her godmother are collectively the three best pegasus riders of the entire Ylissean army, a country known in the first place for its pegasi corps.”

“ _Robin !_ ”

***

The walk was short, and as promised, upon reaching the training field they were treated to the sight of a smattering of old teenagers and young adults stashing away training weapons, supervised by a stern-faced handsome young man in a plain white mask. Hers was better.

Their arrival quickly drew interested glances and whispered comments. Lucina couldn’t help but notice a lot of their gazes seemed to focus on her. Particularly on her mask.

Robin gave a wave and a cheeky grin to a curious grey-haired boy, who hesitantly smiled back.

Trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling of curious gazes upon her, she made her way to the one she supposed was Jeritza and let Seteth make the introductions.

“Good evening, Jeritza. Are you done with your class for the evening ?”

“Seteth. We just finished. Who are these two ?”

Well, judging by how friendly his tone was, she was fairly sure she’d figured out what the problem with his manner might be.

He simply sounded like a thoroughly unpleasant person.

“Prospective staff members. Lady Lowell here in particular is being considered to work alongside you as a combat instructor. I was hoping you might be willing to let her demonstrate her skills ?…”

Jeritza gave her a quick dismissive glance.

“Really ? I suppose we’ll fight then,” he simply said, annoyed but also somehow a little eager.

And with these words, he turned around and headed to the middle of the yard. She followed him.

“A man of few words, your instructor,” commented Robin, tone reproachful in a way she knew well. As a man who always enjoyed learning and imparting knowledge both, the idea of someone with Jeritza’s attitude as a teacher must have grated on him fiercely.

“Such is Jeritza. As I said, however, his skill is without question. Students,” he addressed the lingering crowd, “you may stay and watch so long as you do not disturb. I would advise you remain, as this might just prove a very educational bout,” his tone pointed in a way that let her easily picture him staring challengingly at Robin.

She could hear the implied challenge just fine. _Let’s see if she is as good as you claimed._

Robin just hummed noncommittally in response, as though he was not the one who had oversold her talents. The nerve on that man !

But the time to rag on Robin was later. For now, focus was required.

She looked questioningly at the training weapons on the racks, but Jeritza shook his head.

“Live steel.”

And with that, he was on her.

He did not give her time to draw, or any warning of any kind. He leapt forward, sword clearing its scabbard and slashed at the place she had been at an instant before.

Thank Naga Robin and her had not let themselves go dull on the road. Jeritza was _fast_. She cleared her steel blade from its scabbard, and blocked his second attempt, letting the recoil push her away from him and giving her a second to get her bearings.

Already he was back, but this time she was ready and met him halfway, locking their blades and turning it into a contest of strength. With a snarl, he pushed forward, undaunted. She was surprised to see him match her strength, then begin to push her back as she refused to put all her energy into this first pass, once again letting the strength from his blow push her away.

Two quick circling steps to the side made sure the wall he was trying to make her back into was to her left, before he was onto her again. Anticipating another contest of strength, he went in strong once more. Having anticipated it, she instead deflected his downwards blow to her left and stepped inside his guard, going for a shoulder check to unbalance him further, but a short hop backwards took him away from her. Falling forward slightly, she transformed her momentum into another attack.

He had the same idea. Once, twice, thrice, their blades clashed, teasing each other’s openings, before both retreated, giving up on this pass.

The whole affair had perhaps taken ten seconds at most.

Strong, fast, and apparently skilled. She could see where his confidence came from. She had not met many swordsmen of his caliber.

But she had met some, and she had grown up training every day with a better one.

Another pass, this time with her on the offensive, but she failed to pierce his defences.

A third one, as he grew impatient and tried to rush her, almost succeeding as he savagely batted her blade away with more strength than he’d previously displayed.

Something about the way he fought bothered her. By all means, he should have been an exceedingly tough opponent, but there was a familiarity to his movements, to his rhythm that she failed to place.

Until the fourth exchange. Of all things, it was his guttural snarl that gave it away, as he once again attempted to overpower her and she danced away, his blade flying inches away from her torso.

Ferocity. That was the keyword she had lacked. His snarl had reminded her of the rasps the Risen would make as they fought, and it had all clicked into place. He fought like a beast, all cunning and ferocity, but mindless.

Although perhaps that was not the right word. It was not that he did not think, and more that he kept his thoughts confined to his baser instincts. She would wager he enjoyed fighting in a way that even the Khans might find uncomfortable, and more importantly, that he fought like the Risen did : to destroy his opponent.

Lucina had fought few human beings prior to her trip to the past, owing to the fact there were not that many left to fight in the first place.

But Risen and beasts, she had fought plenty of, and at the reminder, she felt an intense distaste for the man in front of her well up inside her, and a burning desire to prove him wrong. Wrong about what, she was not sure, but the feeling was unmistakeable.

There was a small lull in the fighting, and she could pinpoint in his eyes the moment he tore himself away from her sword into clarity with a deep breath.

“You spend too much time running away. You don’t commit. You lack follow-through,” he had the gall to tell her, perhaps remembering he was supposed to be a teacher.

(“And that’s the gauntlet thrown !” announced an obnoxious looking red-head among the students. “There can only be one mysterious swordsman at this monastery !”)

From where she’d moved during the fight, she could catch Robin’s eye, and she silently asked him if he did not mind her cutting loose.

_Give them hell_ , his answering nod seemed to tell her, looking as peeved as her at the jab at her swordsmanship.

“I’ll admit,” she began, enunciating carefully. “to being careful. After hearing your praises, I was expecting to be surprised.”

With an overly dramatic flourish she just knew she’d picked up straight from her father, she planted her sword in the ground next to her and unlatched her cape.

“Imagine my disappointment,” she simply stated, as her hands found Falchion’s pommel and she gave it a whirl, soaking in the familiar feeling of her true sword cutting through the air.

(“Ooooh,” heckled the red-head, looking delighted at the banter. At least someone here was having fun.)

There was a certain dark satisfaction to watching Jeritza’s sneer turn into an angry rictus. She was not usually one to indulge in such feelings, but something about him had offended her at her very core.

And then he was upon her again, but she was ready. 

He went high again, as though attempting to crush her under his blade. Now that she knew what to expect, and with Falchion’s heavier weight, she simply sank into her stance, stood her ground and batted his strike away with practiced ease. 

Her father’s finishers were always from above, and Chrom was more daunting an opponent.

Taking advantage of both his imbalance and his surprise, she quickly brought her sword back, and he did not leap away soon enough to avoid a small gash on his arm.

“First blood,” was all she said.

With a wordless cry, he charged back at her, somehow faster and stronger than before. As earlier in the fight, she kept just clear of his blade, weaving between his strikes rather than meeting them head on, and at the first sign of slower movement, after he’d expended a bit too much energy, she darted back into his guard, putting him on the back foot with a series of quick strikes until he managed to disengage.

He had a matching gash on his other arm.

“You are strong. You are fast. You are skilled,” she admitted. “But you lack discipline, because your mind is weak.”

She ignored the hint of guilt that wormed its way into her at the shocked look on his face. Maybe he was aware of it then. Good, if that meant he was salvageable.

She had so far been fighting in a more conventional manner, but now was the time to drive her point home.

She sank low, feet apart, blade parallel to the ground and pointed at her target, pommel level with her head, in a stance that would have her laughed at by most serious swordsmen anywhere in the world.

They did not know what an Exalt could do with Falchion.

She darted forward, faster than anything she’d shown him prior, and twice as far as the range she’d let him guess at. Still reeling, he could not react in time to prevent her from meeting her target.

Falchion’s tip hit his pauldron violently and sent him staggering backwards, the shock traveling through his arm and loosening his grip on his sword, letting her bat it away instantly and send it flying.

And then, with a deliberate swing, she brought her sword to his neck, made sure to stare into his eyes, and drew it across his throat in a flash, letting him fall over.

Ignoring the shocked cries from the students, she turned to a Seteth who looked about ready to murder her.

“Do not worry. Falchion will not cut if I do not want it to.”

To prove her point, she nodded at Jeritza, who to his credit was already picking himself up after his close encounter with mortality. She could not resist addressing him one last time.

“Someone who only knows to maim could learn a lot from its restraint.”

The noise from the students had reminded her that she had an audience, and feeling her self-consciousness creeping up now that the adrenaline was subsiding, she nodded to an incredibly entertained Robin as she picked up the blade and cape she’d discarded earlier.

“Let us be off, then. It has been a long day, and I would rather like to rest.”

“Allow me to lead you to your lodgings for the night,” volunteered Seteth, looking a lot like an irate Frederick. Come to think of it, was he not Rhea’s equivalent ? How nostalgic.

* * *

Seteth and the two strangers had barely disappeared into the monastery before they heard the echo of the advisor’s angry voice carry through the halls.

No one spoke a word.

There had been a collective outcry when they had thought the masked swordswoman had killed instructor Jeritza, but when they had realised he was fine, a leaden silence had instead fallen upon them.

Their teacher, having hauled himself back up, simply looked at them, gave them a grunt that could probably be misconstrued as a dismissal, and walked away still looking slightly shocked, presumably off to the infirmary.

Still no one spoke.

The bulk of them had only been here for a week, but even a few days under the heir of House Hrym had made it clear he was an exceptional warrior. To see him manhandled thus was already shocking enough.

For those of them who had not seen real strife, the sudden and violent way in which his opponent had ended things was worse still.

In the end, it was Ashe who unexpectedly broke the silence.

“This really just happened, didn’t it ?”

There was another beat, before Sylvain picked up.

“Sure did. And here I thought the scariest woman I’d ever meet would be Ingrid.”

His comment drew him an almost reflexive kick to the shin from said blonde and a groan from Annette, and while his loud yelp had a touch of the practiced to it, no one commented on it as it drew smiles and sighs from the lions.

Dimitri shot him a grateful look, which Sylvain studiously did not acknowledge. Years spent breaking the tension between him, Felix and Ingrid, and he still tried to pretend he bumbled cluelessly through conversations.

The prince took his time to go over the short encounter in his head. It had only been a few minutes from start to finish. It struck him now in particular just how blindingly fast the fight had been.

When they’d first stopped and Jeritza had imparted his criticism, Dimitri and the other Lions had been surprised ; while their teacher had seemed to have a slight edge, the two clearly looked to be excellent fighters.

And then they had both kicked things up a notch, and the class collectively realised how far they still had to go.

Dimitri, however, had seen something else.

He had seen the all too familiar bloodlust that had begun to take over his instructor towards the end.

He had heard the woman calmly condemn him for it.

And he had seen her then proceed to completely dismantle him, undaunted.

With a hope born of desperation, he wondered if perhaps she might just be the one who could teach him control where all others and he himself had failed.

“Felix,” he said, knowing that there was at least one other person who had to be as intrigued as he was.

“Boar,” was Felix’s answer, and the distracted tone, lacking its usual bite, told him he’d guessed right.

“I am thinking that should our mysterious visitor be in fact hired, I would very much like for her to work closely with the Blue Lions.”

“Hnn,” Felix sneered back. “That should go without saying.”

It had been quite so long since they’d agreed on anything that for a moment he allowed himself to pretend they were still friends, and he hadn’t irrevocably ruined everything between them. Felix’s mind, however, was already elsewhere.

“I need to see that sword up close.”

(Everyone tactfully ignored Sylvain’s crowing “Aye, I’m sure you’re up for some _swordplay_ with her”)

“She said the sword’s name was Falchion, didn’t she ?” asked Ashe. “Do you think it’s a relic ? And that it really doesn’t cut unless she wants it to ? Is that even possible ?”

“Would that mean she has a Crest then ?” interjected Annette.

Ingrid, meanwhile, was muttering to herself, clearly increasingly taken by the dramatic nature of this stranger’s arrival now that she was over the spar’s violent end.

“A mysterious masked woman, wielding a legendary sword…” 

Dedue said nothing. Whilst everyone had focused on the fight, only he had payed attention to the white-haired man that had also been present. That man, he reckoned, felt far more dangerous than he’d appeared.

Mercedes stared worriedly towards the infirmary, something familiar aching at the back of her mind.

In the darkness where he was concealed, Hubert frowned, and vanished.

* * *

In their temporary bedroom, Robin and Lucina finished unwinding, debriefing the day’s events. For the most part.

"I cannot believe I let myself get so worked up ! Those students must all think me so shameless !"

"Now, Lucina, you know how you get when you fight with that mask. I'm sure they all thought you were very dashing."

" _I do not want to be dashing, I want to be respectable !_ "

“You know you can't help it. Besides, did you know you are incredibly attractive when you get worked up like that ?”

“That would explain how often you seem to attempt driving me mad. Now carry on that massage. You’re still not forgiven for egging Seteth on.”

“Yes dear," he said, smiling at having successfully distracted her from her self-flagellation as he began kneading her shoulders again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's probably the last time I'll focus on a fight in so much detail. It felt like a good way to translate the core conflict between Lucina and Jeritza's personalities, and to introduce her to the house that has the biggest collective interest in her skill at arms, but I can't say I enjoyed writing it much - I'll probably try to switch up the way I write those for future ones.
> 
> Speaking of, Lucina ! I feel like because her supports pretty much near-universally show either the dutiful exalt or the socially awkward dork, it's easy to forget that she's kind of a drama queen. I mean, she spends the first half of the game running around in a mask and cape, calling herself after her childhood hero, appearing at the best moment to deliver a couple of witty one-liners and save the day before disappearing. Her crit line is literally her yelling "I challenge my fate !" like this is Gurren Lagann. I like to imagine she just easily gets carried away, and then goes to hide to wallow in embarrassment as soon as she's alone.
> 
> Thank god I also brought her along with Robin, because in hindsight I have no idea how I would have gotten Robin to get along with Rhea and Seteth if she wasn't there to provide some much needed diplomatic appeasement. Rhea and Seteth might look like they've accepted all this a bit easily, but that discussion is nowhere near over and they are certainly not feeling trusting. They are, however, incredibly lonely and still traumatised by the destruction of their near entire race, and the idea that there might be others like them beyond the sea living in peace has them slightly desperate. Shame for them that Nabateans are not quite manaketes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that took longer than expected - I struggled a lot to get past a certain point, and then ended up deleting about 5k words and restarting from scratch in order to make it more tolerable, do not recommend. Don't think this chapter's quite my finest work, but at least now it's done and we can finally get to the fun part !

The morning saw them up bright and early, if only because it was a habit Lucina had never managed to shed from years on the run, and Robin had quickly learnt that she had little patience for lazing in bed.

After a year and some on the road, he could honestly say his morning sleep was the one true sacrifice he had had to make in order to be with her.

That did not mean, however, that he had to share her enthusiasm for early morning training. Lucina nearly always went to train first thing in the morning, before anything else, particularly when she was feeling a bit antsy, something he blamed Chrom for : not only was he much the same, but he had apparently put _Frederick_ in charge of her training and physical conditioning when she was younger. Frederick !

He should probably keep an eye on the tiny Lucina to make sure she was spared.

Nonetheless, he dutifully followed her to the training grounds they had seen yesterday, tailed all the way by a pair of disgruntled knights who were apparently their minders for the day. Just because he had no intention of joining in did not mean he was going to let them get split up in a potentially hostile location.

They made their way to the empty yard. Unsurprising, considering the hour, but so much time spent dealing with the Shepherds had led him to always expect any given group of warriors to have some oddballs among them. Training enthusiasts simply happened to be one of the more common brand of oddities.

He settled down and opened his latest book, a historical account of Leicester’s failed first attempt at secession from the Adrestian Empire that was honestly rather drab. He deeply regretted trading away his copy of _Collected folktales of Sreng & Albinea_ for it. The inability to keep a library while traveling on the road was beginning to wear on him.

Struggling as he was to get into his reading, he let himself be distracted by watching Lucina’s sword drills, gaze tearing away from the pages every few minutes to linger on her. She was moving a bit choppily ; obviously a bit nervous, then. Judging by the state of the knots on her back yesterday evening, he’d no doubt she was feeling a little tense.

Not that he wasn’t. They were both worriers at heart, but he was a planner, and she was a doer. He could always assuage his worries by thinking about how to address them should they crop up. She needed to do something about them, and right now she couldn’t.

Musing as he was, he almost missed the figure that made it into the yard — a surprisingly stealthy one, the soft patter of her feet on the ground almost imperceptible to him, but he was friends with Kellam.

He was surprised to see a young woman from what must have been Brigid, judging from the tattoo and the skin tone. She looked a bit confused, too, either at there being anyone present at the crack of dawn or at the fact he’d heard her coming. After shaking off her confusion, however, she gave a polite nod of greeting and moved on to the weapon rack.

The serious type, then. Fair enough.

He went back to his reading and ogling at Lucina, though he watched from the corner of his eye as the girl picked up a training sword and began going through the motions.

Fairly strong, surprisingly fast, good focus…

He suppressed a wince.

He’d promised to be on his best behaviour today. Sure, he was eventually going to end up breaking that promise somehow, but before they’d even had breakfast ?

Luckily for him, Lucina could read him like a book and was joining him for a quick water break.

“Should I be jealous to see you staring at another woman ? I would think her a bit young for you,” she quipped, smirk taking the bite out of her words. She knew well the look of the frustrated tactician.

“Sorry, dear, it’s just…”

He waved his hand in the air somewhat listlessly, as though churning the air would conjure the words he was looking for.

“Wasted potential,” he finally settled on with a sigh.

An arched brow was his only answer, as she leaned against his table and took another look at the girl.

“She seems rather good for her age,” she simply commented neutrally. He would say his piece anyway eventually, but better not give him ground for any tangents.

“Oh, she is. Think she might be younger than most of the other students we’ve run into, too. Still some baby fat on those cheeks, unless I’m mistaken.”

“Then surely that would make it all the more impressive ?”

“Sure, sure,” he waved away dismissively, before his tone turned into the petulant whine she was expecting as his self-control crumbled. “But she could be so much better !”

And there it was. It had not been enough for him to turn the Shepherds into one of the most formidable and legendary group of fighters in Ylisse and Valm’s recent history. Whenever he encountered someone who he reckoned failed to live up to their potential (and he had a far different interpretation of that statement than most others did), he just had to attempt to nudge them along the way to excellency. At this point, it was compulsive.

She had long stopped trying to restrain him from doing it.

“So why have you not already gone to talk to her ?”

He looked at her, utterly gobsmacked.

“… I can ?”

And now it was her turn to be confused.

“Of course ? I do not believe I have ever stopped you from doing such before.”

“But I promised you I would be on my best behaviour today and not do anything that would annoy our hosts ?” he told her, looking for all the world like the most lost puppy she’d ever seen.

Naga above, how could a man so clever be so stupid at times ?

“Robin, we are to become teachers at this institution. Going out of your way to teach a student is not one of your aggravating eccentricities in this situation, but an action that speaks well of your commitment to the position.” Her tone was scolding, but her eyes were fond. “You should know this already.”

There was a little instant of silence.

“That seems… rather obvious in retrospect,” he mused, before his entire face lit up. He jumped out of his chair, forgotten book clattering on the floor, and suddenly cupped her cheeks before excitedly landing a solid kiss on her lips. “You got some lessons from Lon’qu and you practiced with Say’ri, didn’t you ? Think you can pull off a decent impression ? Come, I didn’t see a Killing Edge on the training racks but I bet there’s a thinner sword there that should do the job…”

An incoherent mess of blushes and stammering was his only answer.

* * *

Petra had been surprised to see strangers at the training yard, when she had so far been the only one to use it at this time, but she had only been here for a week. That she would not know every single one of the monastery’s inhabitants and their habits was to be expected.

She’d been a bit surprised the young man reading at a table had heard her arrive, preoccupied as he’d seemed by staring at the other woman on the yard, but he apparently had good hearing. After giving him a quick sign of acknowledgment, she’d moved along and began her work.

It did not hit her that there was perhaps more to this until she took another good look at the woman. Her eye was first drawn by her form, in fact, her strikes flowing flawlessly with what looked like deceptive ease, but she knew to watch the way her corded muscles tensed to betray her exertion.

She’d blame the early hour, but it was only then that she noticed the woman was wearing a mask. She’d not paid much attention to the chatter during yesterday evening’s dinner, because she found trying to understand an excitable Caspar sometimes more effort than it may have been worth, but it had been impossible not to hear parts of his tale.

According to what some of the Blue Lions had told him, Seteth had apparently brought a prospective combat instructor to their training and had her duel professor Jeritza. That was already notable enough, but apparently, not only had she soundly defeated him, but also castigated his attitude. To top it off, she wore a mask and used a strange sword that might have been a relic.

She wondered how she’d only just now managed to notice the sword. It was certainly unique enough, though having never seen a relic, she had no idea if that was what one was supposed to look like.

Looking at her now, she could see it. Professor Jeritza was a fine warrior, if a little violent, but he was the only one she’d yet seen train with that degree of fluidity. Perhaps the Knights of Seiros were better ; she’d not seen them in action yet, and they certainly had a reputation.

With a small frown, she put such musings out of her head. She was here to train.

For the next few minutes, she continued her drills, so focused that she did not even notice the other woman had stopped, or the hushed conversation she had with the white-haired man while looking at her, hear her yelp in embarrassment or see her head to the racks to grab a couple of practice swords.

She did, however, eventually hear someone making his way close to her.

Winding her motions down, she turned towards the footsteps, only to see the white haired man from earlier, walking with hands spread wide and a grin on his face.

She frowned, annoyed at his rudeness for ignoring basic training yard etiquette, and tensed, but whatever she may have been expecting, it wasn’t for him to address her in fairly accented Brigidian.

“Good morning to you, miss ! Can I borrow a moment of your time ?”

“That would depend what for. You are the visitor that arrived yesterday, yes ?”

“Correct ! I am Robin, my partner and I are to be becoming teachers…” he began, before interrupting himself. “… to become teachers here at the school. Apology for my Brigidian, I had to focus on learning Fódlani for my travels. But perhaps I will learn from you, no ?”

While a little annoyed at his presuming familiarity, she found herself nonetheless too curious to blow him off. Besides, speaking her native tongue a little bit, even with a poor speaker, felt lovely, like a little (tiny) piece of home.

“Nonetheless, I appreciate your efforts. Few foreigners try to learn our tongue — that you have tried at all speaks well of you. May I ask why you have sought me out ?”

“I think it speaks badly of them ! But yes, manners, where was I ?” he picked up, and she could not help but think he seemed a little scatter-brained. Like Professor Hanneman — perhaps it was common to teachers in Fódlan ? Her tutors growing up had definitely been more austere. “I saw you train, and could not help but be thinking you needed help ! So I came to offer it!”

“… Help ?”

She was now officially confused. She’d done nothing but basic drills, and she’d done those well enough, by her reckoning.

She was also a little peeved. The man had not even been training !

Before she could ask for clarification, however, the woman from earlier reached them. Petra had completely forgotten about her. She simply gave Petra a respectful nod in greeting.

“Lucina Lowell of Ylisse. Pleased to make acquaintance,” and where that Robin man’s Brigidian was awkward, hers was very much an uphill struggle. Nonetheless, she appreciated the gesture.

“Petra Macneary,” she returned, and with another nod of acknowledgment the woman turned away from her and threw a simple practice sword at her partner, whose face lit up even more. They hadn’t shown any recognition at her name. Curious.

“Ah, good ! Now, Petra, listen well !” he began enthusiastically.

Her doubts must have shown on her face, because Lucina gave her a sympathetic smile.

“You listen. He sometimes not very good with people, but Robin best at teaching. Traveled far in many lands, and no one better,” she told her, before muttering what was probably a couple of curses in a language she didn’t recognise, likely frustrated at her incapacity to express herself correctly.

“You are too kind, Lucina ! But you !”

And with that, the full brunt of his focus returned on Petra, and suddenly she felt… something. It was in his eyes, she realised. His face was smiling, his body language soft and harmless, but there was an intensity to his look that made her feel like she was being pulled apart at the seams, and the very matter of her being scrutinised. It was a thoroughly uncomfortable experience.

And though there was still a happy tinge to his voice, it was now much more decisive.

“Why do you even try to be a soldier ?”

Well this certainly wasn’t what she expected. It was much worse. Feeling genuine anger rising up, she readied a reply, only to be cut off before she could even begin.

“No, don’t deny. Think ! Think ! You are not a soldier,” he insisted, and as she was about to lash out for good, his tone became harsher and his look much colder. “You are a hunter. You learned to fight by hunting, learned to move in nature. It is in your muscles, in your movement. How does a hunter win a fight ?”

She tried another token protest, but it was silenced quickly and she didn’t insist. Perhaps he was not out merely to insult her.. He was a teacher, they had both said so. And the manner in which he’d guessed this much about her just from looking a few minutes at her was rather frightening. She would give him the benefit of doubt. He didn’t wait for an answer.

“A fighter wins by defeating opponents. A soldier wins by surviving a fight. A leader wins by accomplishing objective. How does a hunter win ?”

She didn’t even try to open her mouth this time, and he indeed did not even wait for her to formulate an answer.

“Simple : a hunter wins by striking first. Whether you hunt deer, wolves or people, a hunter waits for to perfect moment, and then strikes. A hunter is focused, skilled and fast. Anything else ? Not essential. Good, but not essential. If your first strike cannot kill, then it must set up your second. If your second does not kill, then it must set up your third. A hunter wins better, wins faster than anyone else, but they can never surrender the initiative. Because when they do, their prey either runs away or kills them.”

He left her to stew a little with his words. He was not _wrong_ , but she still didn’t see what it was he wanted to tell her.

“As I said, you train like a soldier. Not playing to your strengths. Your sword is too heavy. Your forms too safe. You are learning to fight like someone who does not lose, like a soldier. That is not where your potential is. You are fast, faster than almost anyone, and you have good focus. You have patience. Fight to win.”

Once again, he allowed a little pause for her to think on his words, as if he’d not just apparently spotted, analysed and articulated in what must not have been more than fifteen minutes all told some of the issues she had been struggling for months in her swordsmanship tutoring without managing to put a name on them.

It seemed so stupidly clear now.

“Now, watch. Lucina is not a proper Swordmaster, a swordsman who fights like a hunter, but she is still good at it. Watch her move. After, tell me what you have seen.”

For the first time since their arrival, she noticed that Lucina was not holding her own odd oversized sword, but a long, thin one which, truth be told, looked a bit frail. Was that what he’d referred to when he said her sword was too heavy ?

The two squared off against each other, gave each other a quick nod, and Lucina _struck_. The point of her sword sailed straight towards the base of Robin’s throat, but he managed to deflect the blow with surprising deftness.

It did not do him much good.

It happened in a flash. Lucina's sword went low, whacked Robin’s knee and she then took advantage of his little stumble to slash across his chest. She could have blinked and missed most of it.

She had to replay the scene three times in her mind before she finally grasped the sheer amount of _skill_ and _control_ on display.

Lucina had only struck thrice, but every blow had been a killing one. 

The opener, a thrust to the throat, for obvious reason. When Robin had reacted in time and batted her sword aside, she’d accounted for that : by slackening her wrist slightly at the last moment just before his blade hit hers, she let her blade be pushed further away from his body than it would have been had she committed and tried to force her way through. This had given her a better angle to go for his knee, a target which Robin was currently not in the position to defend well when it was attacked from a wide angle. She hadn’t simply whacked his knee — had the sword not been a training one and Robin not reacted just in time to jump back, it would have cut off Robin’s leg at the knee. As it was, Robin reacted soon enough that it only hit the front of his knee, but that was enough to make him lose balance, and that in turn was enough for Lucina to slash his chest.

Three strikes, any of which could have killed. And every one of which had set up another finisher.

No power overwhelming, no contest of endurance — just pure skill and speed of execution in action.

Three seconds top.

In the silence, Robin simply gave her a look, and then nodded to himself, seemingly satisfied she’d understood.

Then they raised their swords and went at it again.

They went bout after bout after bout, the exchanges almost always decided near instantly. If Lucina did not succeed on the first attack, or started on the defensive, she always attempted to disengage. Anytime she was caught in a struggle, every time she pushed back rather than run away to start again from the beginning, she lost. If she was allowed to dictate the terms of the exchange, however, she eventually won. Invariably.

Petra was aware that they were most likely forcing the traits in order to drive the point home, but the skill on display was clear enough that it honestly didn’t matter. Their point was made most eloquently.

Lucina was grace in motion, never losing focus, moves always sharp and flowing naturally from one to the next.

Robin had been entirely right. Petra wanted that. She wanted to _be_ that.

Eventually, they stopped for a break, the two of them reaching for their waterskins.

Lucina got a few hesitant syllables out, before throwing her an apologetic look and switching to Fódlani.

“My apologies, but I am afraid my Brigidian is not good enough for teaching. Let me also apologise for the quality of my demonstration : as Robin mentioned previously, I am not a proper Swordmaster, and cannot even begin to reproduce the moves of Lon’qu, the one who taught me, or Empress Say’ri, his only equal that I know of in the style.”

She gave her a sad little smile, as though she’d not blown away Petra’s understanding of what swordsmanship could even be.

“If you are willing, and Lady Rhea formalises our enrolment, I would be happy to give you what pointers I can to put you on the path and supervise you, but keep in mind that my own understanding of the style is limited to what little instruction I have received in it, and my own observations.”

Still a little dumbstruck, Petra simply nodded and gave a little sound of acknowledgment.

“I can see you doubt me. I know I am not without skill myself, but if you had seen a master at work, you would understand the difference. Nonetheless, I am glad you seem to have found something of worth in our teaching,” and the smile blue-haired woman gave her was full of a genuine warmth the likes of which she’d not seen much of since leaving Brigid.

And just as she was about to express her gratitude, Robin, who seemed to apparently delight in interrupting her, threw her for a loop.

“Do you know a dancer ?”

“… Yes,” she tentatively allowed, “I am knowing one. Dorothea was a performer at the Mittelfrank Opera, if that is what you are meaning.”

“Perfect, that’ll do. See, you’ve probably noticed, but a key component to fighting like this is flow. The key to skill, and fighting styles that rely almost entirely on it rather than incorporate physical prowess, is the ability to make correct decisions and execute them flawlessly. The first is governed by focus, knowledge and experience. The second is determined by athleticism and flow. Flow, simply put, is the ability to move your body in continuity without waste or hesitation, and is the hardest of all of them to learn.

“And the best example of this, miss Macneary, is dancers, because theirs is an entire art dedicated to continuous purposeful motion. So find your dancer friend, tell her you want to watch her dance, and observe. Observe how she conserves energy and when she chooses to use it up, observe how she cycles between moves, how she decides in a split second whether to stay simple or spice it up and how she positions her body to allow for both possibilities… There’s plenty to see. Actually, I would suggest getting lessons of your own, if you don’t know how already. In Chon’sin, the country of the Empress Say’ri that Lucina mentioned, the art of Swordmasters is also known as blade dancing to some, and there’s a reason for that.”

He took another chug from his waterskin, and then tossed his practice sword to Lucina.

“Anyway, I am but a frail bookworm and hardly a swordsman, so I’ll let you two have fun now. Enjoy yourselves !”

And with that, he just walked away and went back to sit on a bench, picking up the book he’d discarded earlier, looking mightily satisfied with himself.

Truly, what a strange man.

So focused was she on trying to figure him out that she almost didn’t catch the sword that had been thrown at her.

It was the thinner, lighter one she’d seen Lucina use earlier. Then that meant…

“Focus. I am opponent now. Do best to fight like me earlier — you know basics now,” was all the warning she received in broken Brigidian before reflexes honed in the wild had her jump away from Lucina’s sword.

How did it go ? Ah yes, disengage first, plan later.

The sun was well up in the sky before her new teacher took pity on her bruised and exhausted body and let her go for breakfast and a much-needed bath, but she never thought to complain once.

* * *

Seteth was sat in his office pondering his two new headaches’s imminent arrival, and prayed to the Goddess this was not going to become a habit.

Even Rhea’s entry was barely enough motivation to lift his head back up, staring forlornly as it was at the report from the guards he’d set on them.

“My word, Seteth. Are you quite alright ? While I have to confess some unrest, you look as though you’ve hardly slept all night ! Do yesterday’s events trouble you so ?”

He took a deep breath, and tried to let some tension evacuate his body.

“Oh, they troubled me plenty, but I do not expect my sleep was any worse than yours. I have simply been busy getting caught up on what our visitors have been up to, and trying to figure what they are hoping to achieve now. My hopes for a peaceful morning prior to the day’s matter have been ruined, unfortunately.”

“Surely they cannot have gotten up to so much this morning alone ?” she offered.

“Oh, but our new friends are apparently early risers,” he countered. “They rose with the sun, immediately went to train, where they encountered the princess of Brigid. I could not tell you what their conversation was, because it turns out that they apparently just happen to speak Brigidian, but by the time they were done conversing and had demonstrated some swordsmanship to her, miss Macneary was training in an entirely different manner, and according to our guards looked far more dangerous a swordswoman by the time she went for breakfast than she’d been upon waking up.”

His head went back to where he’d buried it in his hands, fingers clawing slightly around his hair.

“Then they very publicly went for breakfast, at a time where most people were up when they could have gone much earlier, whereupon they met the young von Riegan, who happened to loudly mention in front of the entire mess hall that they were from beyond the Veil as he greeted them, and were thanked by Petra in front of the rest of the Black Eagles for their tutoring. This led to a retelling of their effectiveness as instructors, which rekindled yesterday’s talk about miss Lowell’s spar with Jeritza.”

He then gave a very uncharacteristic growl of utter frustration, and Rhea was slightly shocked to see him so peeved. Cichol, for all that he was a worrier, had always been pragmatic and composed at heart whenever Flayn was not involved — it was unusual for him to express such annoyance outwardly.

“All they did was get up, train, talk with a student, and get breakfast. It has barely been four bells since they woke up, and they’ve put the near entirety of the students in their corner, Rhea. They’re all dying to learn from or at least know more about the two of them, and Robin and Lucina have made it clear that their employment is in turn dependent on our say so — and only that. After their little display, we cannot simply deny them and send them on their way without an adequate justification to the students, and they’ve made sure that we cannot claim it to be a matter of skills or credentials.”

The two took a moment to ponder the ramifications of this.

“This is worrying, Seteth,” Rhea finally allowed. “I am not overly concerned about dealing with the students should the need arise, but I am somewhat uncomfortable with the ease and decisiveness with which they acted to ensure they would come in here with an optimal hand…”

Then her head perked up slightly, and she stopped in her tracks, looking at the door.

“Either way, it seems it is too late to plan. Our guests are early.”

True to her word, a few instants later, a knock sounded on the door, and at Seteth’s acknowledgment, Robin swaggered in with a grin, while his companion followed at a more sedate pace, face serious and eyes focused.

“Archbishop, Advisor ! How good to see you again on this fine morning ! I hope this morning finds you hale and hearty, as I certainly am — it has been months since I’ve slept on such a fine bed. To be truthful, I’d expected much worse from a monastery, so call me pleasantly surprised !”

It was at that precise point both of them realised neither were rested enough to deal with this. 

Thankfully, Lucina was at the very least more sedate, offering a deep nod to the both of them along with a perfunctory greeting.

This time, Rhea was decided to keep a handle on the flow of conversation.

“Sir Robin, Lady Lowell, a pleasure to see your night here did you well — though I’ve heard that you did not let this opportunity to rest prevent you from being active ?”

If the veiled accusation bothered them any, they did not let it show.

“I’m afraid years of travel and on campaign have given us some habits which have proven hard to break, Archbishop,” simply demurred Lucina. “Often, I find myself waking up at night expecting to take my turn at watch,” she mused, looking slightly wistful at the thought.

She sounded entirely genuine, and yet Rhea’s hackles were so raised that she could not help but want to immediately order guards to be posted at their door at night.

Almost as if sensing weakness in the slight instant she took to formulate that thought, Robin immediately intervened.

“I myself can’t say the same, but I do love keeping her company ! Anyhow, time’s wasting here, when we could be talking about so many things ! Interesting things ! Lucina gave me a grilling yesterday for apparently annoying the both of you, so I’m just gonna give you a quick rundown of where we’re from and how we ended up where we are as a little token of goodwill, if you will,” he suggested, happily bulldozing over Rhea’s opening attempt at directing the flow of conversation.

This was going to be a long morning, she thought, not even able to open her mouth before he launched into his tale.

* * *

Lucina had not been worried _per se_ that Robin would slip up from the heavily edited version of their tale they’d agreed on giving yesterday evening, but she was well aware that sometimes his enthusiasm and smugness tended to make him a little careless in conversation.

So it was with no little tension that she watched him launch into a quick summary of the history of Archanea-turned-Ylisse, which she only had to interrupt thrice to put him back on track, covering the rise of the Hero-King and his struggles against Medeus and Gharnef, up to the rise of Grima and its slaying by the first Exalt, and a quick thousand-year time skip to a decade or two ago, because “nothing really interesting happened apart from a whole lot of boring political stuff that no one has the time for”.

It didn’t escape her that he spoke fast, projecting his voice with gusto and only ever truly pausing for breath after a tangent or two to ensure any questions or interruptions that might be forthcoming from the other side of the table were too hesitant to manifest themselves in time.

“Well, that’s it for a quick basic history of the continent ! Any questions so far ?”

She did wish being obnoxious did not come quite so naturally to him, however.

“Well that is… certainly quite the tale, one that I feel you may have slightly rushed through, especially considering I imagine you are well aware certain details of it might be of interest to us. I was led to believe, however, that you would be discussing your own circumstances, rather than that of your land ?” asked a commendably stoic Rhea, who to her credit did not even look too rattled or like she wanted to throttle Robin too much.

A most impressive feat that, but she was somewhat fearful Rhea’s restraint wouldn’t last if she didn’t intervene soon.

“Apologies, Archbishop, but our tale is unfortunately intrinsically tied to the past events that we have just mentioned. I hope you will see why providing context prior to its telling was necessary,” she offered. “Robin ?”

“Yes ! So, this whole thing began when I just woke up one day in the middle of a field with this random blue-haired guy and no memory of how I got there. I mean a bunch of stuff had been happening around that time already, but bleh, politics, am I right ? Nothing really kicked into gear until I got involved anyway.”

Watching him get to work, Lucina once again found herself surprised at how easily he slipped into his role. Part of the reason the Shepherds as a group had been both so popular and morale-boosting was not only because they were all a bit… odd and recognisable, but also that Robin, once in charge, had encouraged them to embrace their quirks and let them all on display, rather than try to implement more disciplined behaviour. By doing this, he’d made them larger than life figures, characters pulled straight from the plays, tales and novels of the people rather than mere men. And that was why, even more than their skill or results, no one had truly ever lost hope when they were around, why they had convinced generals and rulers of their capacity to do the impossible.

But of all of them, Robin was still the best at it. He boasted, joked, was smug, irreverent and at times outrageous in turn, but never quite enough to cross the line further than could be tolerated, and always with an air of unconcerned honesty that could be infuriating but somehow made him _believable_.

When Robin said he could do something, people hemmed and hawed, got offended, sometimes thought they could do it better, but they always believed he could deliver, because he’d put so much effort into appearing as someone outside the norm that no one seemed to believe it even applied to him.

And so, as he spun a slightly revised version of their tale, he did not even have to resort to his previous artifices to prevent Rhea and Seteth from interrupting him, as he turned a story of confusion and war into an epic tale fit to fascinate.

And if he insisted a bit strongly on some of the more edifying elements, well, it detracted from some incoherencies one might note if they looked too closely. Like how they’d carefully omitted the whole time travel business, or why Plegia and the Grimleal held such an interest in the Shepherds since they were hardly going to mention Robin and Grima’s links. Honestly, if one took the time to dissect what they were saying, the question of what Robin’s age was supposed to be alone would be worth a raised eyebrow.

But Robin was a good storyteller, and had a handle on what interested their audience. And as it grew in scope, he made it a tale of Naga and Grima’s millenia-long struggle, brought to an end by Naga’s daughter and the heirs to the line of her Chosen.

Not even entirely false, but somewhat mortifying to hear told in this way. Robin himself became simply the runaway son of the Grimleal’s leader, losing his memories when his father attempted and failed to use their shared blood in a dark magic ritual to puppet his body, which was the only outright lie he told, and barely even that far from the truth.

As his tale comes to an end, and he quickly explains the circumstances behind their departure (in far greater detail than necessary) and their wanderings since, their audience, who had stayed firmly quiet and attentive despite themselves, finally stirred.

“So you are telling me that you are here because… you had an argument with miss Lowell’s father about your courting and eloped ?”

“No !” she instinctively responded, years of desperately trying to cut her sister’s delusions in the bud before they’d gain traction acting up without her input, before she even had the time to realise where she was or who was in the room with her.

Seteth and Rhea looked at her with confusion written all over their faces.

Quick, damage control.

“That is, nothing quite so dramatic,” she hedged, outwardly regaining her composure, but she had the sinking feeling no one was buying it. “We have my father’s full blessing — he was simply… less than pleased that we did not precisely wait for it, and we simply meant to take our distances for a time so that cooler heads prevailed. However, our trip proved… unexpectedly quite pleasant, and we decided to prolong it and take our leave for a little longer than initially planned.”

“This is her was of saying that we were working overtime every day for years and therefore really needed a break. I mean, if Chrom is not going to give me a Dukedom or something for keeping his entire country running throughout that time, rebuilding his military from scratch and winning him his wars, the least he can do is let me take a year off every now and then.”

There was silence after that, as the Archbishop and her advisor took a moment to realise just what kind of man they considering hiring here, no doubt.

Eventually, it was Rhea that broke their little status quo.

“Well, between what skills you have shown and what you have told us of your pasts, I have decided to grant you your chance. You may henceforth consider yourselves under our temporary and conditional employment,” she declared with what even Lucina thought might have been a little too much pomp.

Though that might have been all this time listening to Robin beforehand skewing her judgment, and right now the exact necessary level of pomp was being used.

Nonetheless, she could feel a fair amount of the pent up tension in her body releasing. Finally.

“Professor Robin, we will be expecting you to have at least the outline of your curriculum ready by the end of this week. Instructor Lucina, you will have tomorrow off to familiarise yourself with the monastery, but you will begin your duties the following day. Seteth will have a schedule drawn up for you two by tomorrow.”

Lucina watched her take in a deep breath, and put on that serious face that only the truly powerful could wear, those who could threaten violence without ever voicing it through the sheer aura of strength they exuded.

“Understand that this is not a decision I make lightly. You will be watched. You will be made to account for your actions should they stray from the realm of the appropriate. I will not force you to sing hymns in the chapel, but encouraging heretic behaviour will not be tolerated.”

And then she sighed, and a little of her stern demeanour melted away. Lucina thought she mostly look a little tired.

“Do not mistake me for a close-minded fool — there is much of what you have told us that is of interest to me, and my tale and that of my kin is one I am willing to share with you, should you agree to share more of what you know of the… dragon-tribes around the world. But not today, I am afraid. You have given us much to think about, and while we take the time to sort through it and our feelings on it, I must ask you to show restraint in your interactions with the students.”

“Of course, Lady Rhea. Thank you again for the opportunity you have granted us,” Lucina declared with a half-bow. “With your leave ?”

“Granted.”

She shuffled out of the room, sighing at hearing Robin’s “Toodles !”. That was unnecessary.

They carried on for a little while in silence, heading towards their room, Robin looking at her expectantly with one of his smug grins, until she couldn’t bear it anymore.

“Fine ! You were right, we just needed to overwhelm them with information until they just agreed ! I still do not see any reason why that should work, but it did! Are you pleased now, or do you want me to grovel as well ?” she growled.

“Nope, that’s quite enough to stroke my ego ! I did tell you so, though. Also, now that we’re far away enough from the meeting room, best to take care of the other little problem too,” he added. throwing her for a loop before he switched to Fódlani.

“I reckon we’re walked far enough now, so perhaps you could come out and tell us why you’ve been tailing us all morning ? I can’t imagine we make for great entertainment, but then you dark mages are all kind of fucked up so what do I know ?”

For a split second, Lucina had the horrifying thought that Tharja might have followed them all the way to here.

Thankfully, after a few seconds of silence, it was a tall, gangly teenager with a somewhat sinister air and a slightly amateurish attempt at looking menacing that emerged from the shadow of a pillar.

Of course, he was trying to impress Robin of all people.

“Ah, greetings mysterious follower ! Good to put a name to the eminently traceable magical signature !”

The teenager looked an odd mix of offended, confused and possibly a little worried, with a side order of ‘this is not going as expected’. He opened his mouth to respond, but didn’t get the time to.

“Don’t know, don’t care, I only have one question for you — well, two really : are you obsessively in love with me, intend to watch me sleep and/or want to bear my children, or do you regularly talk to corvids about what kind of bloodshed is best ?”

“… No, I cannot say I do but —“

“Great ! You’re surprisingly well-adjusted for a dark mage, good on you. Now if you don’t mind, this was a long meeting and Lucina and I intend to unwind, so if you want to talk come back later. Good day to you !”

And with that he was already walking off, dragging her away by the arm while she was busy trying not to throttle him again for not telling her they were being followed when they both had a language no one here could speak.

Their stalker looked incredibly confused and not a little outraged as he receded into the distance.

At least he had the decency to volunteer the explanation on his own, for once.

“Didn’t pick him up until we left Rhea’s office. I’d felt his signature earlier today, but figured it was just residue, he’s only been using a tiny bit of magic to help blend into the shadows. Honestly, were my sensibility to dark magic not what it is, I’d probably have missed it, most of that was just good old-fashioned skulking. Didn’t tell you earlier because I figured if we were too close to the more heavily guarded areas, he’d probably bail rather than take the bait.”

Struggling to get her annoyance under control, she simply nodded, staying silent until she could be a bit more diplomatic.

“Why not at least get his name, however ?”

“Well, he had a student’s uniform on, so we’ll find out eventually anyway. Besides, with the way he’s skulking, I can guarantee you he’s not an independent agent, or actively in charge. Kid reeks of minion to me. Top minion, but minion nonetheless. Considering our current location, we can expect his boss to be one of the other noble kids — knowing his class should narrow down the list considerably, but with this year’s crop it’s most likely one of the three future rulers. Knowing which one also tells us who is already so deep into plots of some kind that they have a retainer apparently dedicated to matters of skullduggery, and more importantly has some plans for the monastery that necessitate an immediate assessment of unpredicted elements that step into the picture. That tells me relatively short-term and unlikely to sit well with the spirit of church-going, and enough moving parts that cannot be directly supervised at all times to warrant getting reports on every person slated to spend some time here.”

He took a pause for a breath.

“And here I thought I might get bored,” he smiled at her.

* * *

This evening, dinner was a somewhat rowdier affair than it had been for the last few days, as everyone had gotten settled in. The blame, of course, lied mainly with the two who had sat down for their food and happily confirmed their new tenure.

Claude von Riegan, along with a handful of the Deer, was sat next to the Robin man, and the sight almost drew a grimace from her. Hearing them even from afar making a game out of answering each other’s questions in increasingly elaborate and enthusiastic ways while never actually providing a single scrap of usable information was impressive, but more importantly headache-inducing and hardly a good use of her time.

The rather attractive — she could admit it, in the depth of her mind — blue-haired woman had been immediately beset by Petra and some of the Blue Lions, and appeared to be politely discussing swordsmanship, though she was notably more guarded than her companion. She also noticed that Dimitri, while sat further away, was not letting his gaze off her. She’d think him smitten, but his eyes were utterly focused and his expression pensive.

Something to investigate at a later date, then.

And then there was her, Edelgard mused. Perhaps she should be mingling, or at least assessing their new instructors through conversation, but her mood was firmly stuck on other things.

This might have had to do with the scrolled up papers in Hubert’s hand, which he very much looked like he wanted to set on fire despite knowing it would be a mistake.

Upon entering the dining hall, Professor Robin, as this was now apparently his title, had veered off from his partner to accost them, and had happily and guilelessly told Hubert he’d seen him drop it earlier.

Knowing he’d done no such thing, her retainer had however known not to cause a scene and coldly thanked the man, who had the gall to tell him he was at their service

On the scroll was written surprisingly comprehensive advice on how to reduce mana leakage from several dark magic cantrips, as well as schematics for its practical implementation into a more efficient conversion system for a Miasma spell matrix. It frankly went over her head for the more specialised part, but judging from Hubert’s grudging lack of commentary, it was legitimate.

More saliently, the sheaf of papers’ header was _if your liege wants to know something, they can just ask — we have office hours now_.

He’d looked straight at her as she’d read it, and then just told her he was at their service. With a little mocking smile.

Hubert’s instincts had been right, as often. They would need to be watched closely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said, not my finest work, but this one was a struggle. The original version didn't have the Petra scene because it went straight to Rhea and Seteth, and not only did that not feel like a very exciting read, I was having trouble imagining they just went there with no preparations whatsoever.
> 
> So I deleted all 5k words of it, made a much shorter version, and instead started off with the Petra training scene, which was much more fun to write but also frustrating fo another reason. Way back when I was first coming up with this concept and I decided to have them arrive from Brigid, I thought "wouldn't it be funny if they pick up Brigidian there, and and later have conversations with Petra where she's the well-spoken one and they are the ones struggling with grammar ?". Turns out trying to find a tone I was at least kind of content with took much longer than I thought. Had to improve the quality of Robin's speech a few times when I realised just how clunky it made his explanations, and it was inconceivable he wouldn't just switch back to Fódlani to be more comprehensible. I hope y'all can at least tell he's not as fluid as usual for most of that scene.
> 
> Anyway, this one's out, and it was the one I was looking forward to the least, so expect some more fun stuff from here on out - this is where student interaction begins !


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one that turned out to be way longer than planned ! I really need to cut these a bit shorter, 10k's a bit too tiring to do in one sitting I feel. Anyway, enjoy, and I hope you like house leaders !  
> Fair warning, I'm posting this because I'm moving houses tomorrow and won't have the time to work on this for a little while, so it's even less re-read than normal. Apologies for any stupid obvious typos that made it through.

Instructor Lucina would only hold class once a week for each house, on top of an inter-class swordsmanship seminar.

Dimitri and the rest of the Blue Lions had been surprised (and, for quite a few of them, perhaps slightly dismayed) to hear it, until they’d asked her at dinner yesterday evening and found out that she had been hired to coverJeritza’s deficiencies.

That is, individual care and follow-up as well as one-to-one tutoring.

Looking at it in hindsight, that was a completely understandable decision. More importantly to Dimitri, it was exactly what he’d hoped for.

The questions he’d been nursing since he’d seen her spar with Jeritza, however, would have to wait, because the Lions had lucked out and were the first to have a class session with her.

They slowly congregated at the training yard about fifteen minutes early, all of them, curious as they were.

Ashe was trying to look calm, but his fingers were all jittery and he couldn’t help the nervous touch to his excited blabber, which Mercedes was humouring with a smile and her usual patience, and Annette at least seemed amused by it. Ingrid looked focused, next to a Sylvain who was lackadaisically reclined on a bench, and who was in turn joking to a scoffing Felix. Dimitri tried not to think about how easily and how well they fit together.

He did not even have to wonder about Dedue, who stoically stood net to him, alert but betraying nothing.

No one knew what she had planned. After their boisterous introduction to the classes at large for dinner two days ago, the two new professors had holed themselves up in their room to apparently urgently come up with a curriculum and some lesson plans, and barely anyone had seen them all day yesterday.

They were, however, about to find out.

Instructor Lucina calmly walked onto the field, her gait purposeful but unhurried. She spared them all a glance as she set herself front and centre in the middle of the yard, her posture the picture of a noble military officer at rest, hand lingering on the pommel of her sword.

Everyone was instantly silent and focused on her.

Perhaps, then, there was more to learn from her than combat skills — he could only envy the ease with which she had commanded their attention.

“Greetings, class. As you all already know, I will henceforth be the one supervising your combat practice for this time of the week. Though we have had the occasion to meet, allow me a proper introduction,” she declared, any sign of the reserved woman from dinner vanishing away, as she slipped into the warrior persona they’d been so awed by before.

“I am Lucina of House Lowell, princess and commander to the Halidom of Ylisse. And although I cannot imagine Jeritza encourages such things, allow me to warn you in advance : I am here to teach you to fight. No more, and no less. Do not expect me to teach you elegance in the sparring ring or duel etiquette. I have spent the bulk of my career as a warrior fighting dark creatures on the battlefield and assassins in ambushes. They have little time for such things, and therefore neither have I,” she stated, her neutral tone echoing in the yard in absolute silence.

“I am not,” she allowed, voice a bit softer, “saying that such things are worthless or a waste of your time. In the end, it shall all depend on what _you_ wish to become, _who_ you wish to be. But you will not learn them from me.”

Well, Dimitri reckoned, that was certainly a way to make an impression. He chanced a glance at Felix, and was unsurprised to him wearing an expression on his face that probably counted as gleeful excitement for him ; that is, eyes a little bright and a neutral expression rather than his usual dour frown.

“With this established, let me explain further how our time together will unfold,” she began. “You will receive the bulk of my teaching through individual tutoring. That will for the most part be the time during which we will focus on your individual skills.

“Our class sessions, however, will be where you will learn to fight _together_. Sparring and drills are fine exercises, but while they do promote growth they are poor renditions of battlefield conditions. As students of this establishment, and for many of you as future commanders of your own demesne’s troops, you will be called to fight together with others.”

At that, she fixed them with a deadly serious look, settling on him in particular, and the blue cloak that was the symbol of his leadership here.

“You will need to learn not to get in the way of your allies, and to sometimes deal with multiple opponents. You will learn that winning your individual fights mean little if the battle is lost. You will learn that being more skilled than your enemy can mean nothing if they can crowd you, and that against a more skilled opponent victory is best achieved with the aid of others.”

She was silent for a short while, letting her words sink in.

“With that in mind, show me what you have learnt. You have a minute to grab a training weapon and limber up. You may use whichever one you most favour — or, should you be so inclined, forgo them entirely and use magic. It matters not.”

Another pause, as she repeated her previous action and stared them all down individually, ending yet again insistently on Dimitri. He had the feeling he was being singled out. Did she know or suspect something of his issues ? She had shown clear distaste for Jeritza’s bloodlust, could she sense it in him too ?

“When that minute is over, you will come at me, all at once, and try to take me down.”

If he’d thought she looked intense with the mask on, this was something else ; somehow, having her eyes uncovered made it much clearer just how _focused_ she could be, something he’d only guessed at during the spar he’d witnessed. In an echo of that earlier fight, she drew her sword (the possible relic, he reminded himself, even though cursory research had not showed anything resembling that description or any reference to the name Falchion — who knew about foreign treasures, though ?) and planted it in the ground in front of her, hands resting on the pommel.

“Your minute starts now.”

Her declaration was followed by a moment of stillness, as they all processed what was going on, stunned, before they all took off running towards the stands bar Annette, who most likely intended to stick with magic. Even Mercedes grabbed a bow, something he’d not really ever seen her use, and which she was handling with a practiced ease he’d not expected of her.

Perhaps his kindly classmate had more depth to her than he’d assumed, he realised, chastising himself for so easily dismissing her as uncomplicated.

“Thirty seconds.”

He pushed away the distracting thoughts and instead tested the weight of the practice lance in his hands as he stepped more sedately towards the yard, cautious. Lighter than he preferred and was used to, but not by too much, he figured.

Lucina had not moved an iota from her earlier position, for all intents and purposes hewn from the same stone as the walls around them.

Around him, his Lions finished settling into position. Ashe, Annette and Mercedes formed a loose line behind them, Mercedes hanging a bit further back than the other two. Sylvain and Ingrid fanned out to his right, moving in lockstep with the ease that came from years of knowing each other and occasional shared training sessions. Felix stood straight in the middle, sword out, eyes fixated on their opponent, almost chomping at the bit to get started. Dimitri had intended to be the centre for the initial thrust, but there was no point trying to reach Felix in that state, so he instead took the left flank along with Dedue, who stood protectively by him as always.

Lucina looked at them, and nodded once, still not making the slightest movement otherwise.

“Begin.”

The word had barely left her mouth that Felix flew forward, intent on testing his skills against hers. He bit back the order he’d almost barked at for Felix to stay put, knowing it would just anger him. For an instant, Dimitri thought she would simply stand there and take it, until at the very last moment, she ripped her blade from the ground and met Felix’s own halfway.

She’d exhibited such caution, nimbleness and precision while fighting Jeritza that Dimitri, and he’d wager Felix too, did not expect for her to simply firm her stance and stand her ground. He was even more surprised when the ensuing contest of strength proved to be no contest at all, as she without so much as a grunt of exertion pushed Felix straight backwards, even slightly lifting his feet off the ground.

Instead of following up on an unbalanced Felix, however, she veered to her left, just dodging Ashe’s shot and entering Sylvain’s range. Scrambling a little at having to make his thrust faster than he’d expected, his lance went slightly off-course and she stepped to the inside of Sylvain’s guard, twisting her body to bat aside his weapon with her sword — and just avoid Ingrid’s thrust, who’d come in hoping to tag team her while she was pegged down.

What happened next was the precise moment he realised just how out of their depth they really were, as an arrow from Mercedes flew by, the tentative effort floating past Lucina.

Their instructor, still in the middle of her pivoting, grabbed with a free hand Ingrid’s lance and _pulled_. Ingrid, her centre of gravity still forward, stuck in the middle of her thrust as she was, was suddenly jerked forward, where she met Sylvain’s weapon and promptly tripped over it and fell, getting Sylvain’s lance stuck under her and letting go of her own.

Still in the same motion, Lucina continued her pivot, holding Ingrid’s lance the wrong way, and brought with the strength of her momentum the haft sailing straight towards Felix (who’d gotten his balance back and dashed in hope of striking her seemingly defenceless back). To his credit, he did get his guard up in time : he simply overestimated his capacity to block an object of that weight and size arriving at that speed, wielded by someone stronger than him. The lance crushed straight through his guard and hit his head, knocking him firmly out.

One.

Finally, she finished her spin, positioning herself squarely facing Sylvain, who’d just managed to disentangle his weapon from Ingrid. Dimitri suddenly upped his pace, getting a dreadful premonition of what was about to happen.

He was too late. Before Sylvain could get his guard back up in time, Lucina just thrust the butt of her stolen weapon into his face and knocked him out for the fight too.

Two.

Slowing down slightly, he returned to his previous cautious approach, figuring it was too dangerous to rush her now that she wasn’t distracted anymore.

It was a mistake, as she turned around and with skilful efficiency finally took her lance the right way round, taking a small step backwards to the left to avoid another shot from Ashe and shift her weight around to…

No, surely not. It was a training weapon, for sure, but hardly a javelin !

Once again, he was instantly proven wrong, when with a step forward and perfect form she simply sent what should have been a heavy and unwieldy projectile sailing like a Thunder spell straight across the yard into a caught off-guard Mercedes, who collapsed, winded from the improvised javelin that had just hit her in the gut.

Three, and this was getting a bit humiliating now.

Speaking of spells, Annette’s first effort, a strong and focused blast of wind, was dodged with a jump to the side so controlled it looked like a dance step, and instead plowed straight into an approaching Ingrid, who’d picked up Sylvain’s lance to make up for her own lost one, and was sent crashing backwards.

Four.

Not having closed the gap enough to threaten her instantly, he couldn’t stop her when she dashed straight towards their now gutted back line. He finally broke into a sprint, but by the time he’d turned around and started chasing she’d already reached Ashe, who didn’t even have the time to draw his training sword before she caught him across the chest (when had he gotten so close ?) and took him down.

Five, and the feeling of helplessness as he failed to catch up to her was echoing disturbingly familiar memories.

Not stopping, Lucina dashed towards Annette, who hesitated to fire back. Dimitri only realised too late why, as Lucina had repositioned herself to put him in the mage’s line of fire should she dodge, and by the time Annette found her resolve, it was too late to ready the spell.

Six, and now it was just him and Dedue, his slower bodyguard lagging a little behind him as Dimitri rushed forward, all caution forgotten, intent on taking her down for good.

His furious thrust was, to his ire, utterly ignored, as instead of engaging him she darted past him, shoving him aside, and, with a far-reaching thrust the likes of which she’d demonstrated against Jeritza, hit a taken-by-surprise Dedue straight in the gut.

Seven, and now he was alone.

With a growl, he made another savage attempt, and there was a dark satisfaction when he saw her composure break for the first time, a surprised expression passing fleetingly over her face when he powered through her attempt at batting his thrust to the side and she was instead forced to jump back, giving him the range advantage

There’d be no pulling his lance from him. And if strength was where his advantage lay, then he refused to get bogged down in a losing battle of skill. When she attempted to step into his range for a probing attack, he instead went for a broad swipe, counting on sheer brute strength as he packed his considerable physical strength into it. Enough to at least break some ribs and ensure she stay down.

Instead of being intimidated, she took a much quicker in-step than he’d expected and found herself too far inside his guard for him to be able to do anything without disengaging.

Not that he had the time to, as the pommel of her blade found his face and he crumpled to the ground, strings cut.

That was eight, and the small part of him that sounded suspiciously like a child version of himself was glad when the red haze that had begun to filter his vision instead turned to black.

* * *

He’d only been out for a minute or so before consciousness found him again, as he felt a still pained-looking Mercedes’s magic wash over him, healing what he reckoned might have been a split brow. Pulling himself upright, he looked over the field at his classmates, who were all looking a mixture of sheepish, awed and bruised as they gathered their bearings.

Felix was the only other one still down, and when Mercedes saw to him and he jerked upwards, it was clear by the scowl on his face that he’d noticed he was the last one up, on top of having been the first one down. His pride must have rankled fiercely at that.

They meekly shuffled into place in front of Lucina, who had regained her earlier position, looking for all the world as though she hadn’t moved. Thankfully for his ego, he could see if he looked carefully the barest sheen of sweat on her brow, a testament to the fact she’d at the very least had to make _some_ effort to accomplish this.

She looked a them, letting the silence speak for her.

It worked, as they all stewed in the knowledge and realisation they had not done particularly well.

“I will not lie to you. This was a disappointing performance, and I expected better from all of you. Nonetheless, I am not here to unduly shame you, but to help you improve. With that in mind, let me first go over your individual performances before I discuss your group tactics as a whole.

“I shall begin with your backline, as the less egregious cases here. Mercedes,” she began with a nod at the blonde, “congratulations. You are the only one who played your individual part as you should have. Your distancing was good, your arrow was a little off to the right, but by putting Sylvain to my immediate left I forced you to overcompensate to avoid friendly fire. If you intend to stick with the bow and your back-line support role, however, I would advise you to pick up Physic, in order to make full use of that versatility. With it, you could have begun healing Felix already, for example, before I took you down. Well done,” she concluded with another nod at her and a rare smile.

“Annette. There was not much more you could have done, bar being more aware of Ingrid’s positioning for your first spell. Your Wind spell was perfectly formed, and your Fire one also looked like it would be, but remember that sometimes one must sacrifice excellence for efficiency. Had you reacted a bit earlier and gone for a sloppier cast, you could have most likely interrupted my advance. Nonetheless, I can tell you have little actual battle experience, so a fair attempt overall.”

Annette’s noisy sigh of relief at not being singled out for her friendly fire on Ingrid brought a chuckle out of Mercedes and a smile out of a few of them, but their relaxation was short-lived.

“Ashe. You are a good shot, but as an archer, you must understand that your place is not in the thick of the fighting. It is fine for you to learn and use other melee weapons, but so long as you are acting like an archer, then stay in an archer’s position. You approached recklessly when your second shot missed, and that allowed me to reach you before you could even pull out your sidearm.”

There was a slightly longer pause, and Dimitri realised she’d reached the end of their backline. This, he supposed, was where the criticism would really hit.

“Ingrid and Sylvain. You worked well together, and approaching me at the same time was a good idea. You are obviously unused to fighting as a pair in genuine fights rather than sparring, but I expect that with some practice you’ll learn not to get into each other’s way at higher intensity. Despite what you might think, your performances as individuals in this fight were second only to Mercedes. I will come back to you later, however, to discuss where your mistake was.”

And then she finally turned her gaze to a Felix who was so antsy he might as well have been wearing grooves into the sand.

“Felix. This was a shameful display. Shameful, because it was a display of utter idiocy, and because it shows a clear lack of respect for your instructors. Did I not tell you before the fight ? Against a more skilled opponent, victory is best achieved with the help of others. And instead of heeding my words, you charged off recklessly, expecting to get a duel between swordsmen, something I specifically told you the battlefield does not care about. The battlefield does not care for your pride, or your recognition,” she hammered home. “You charged a superior opponent to prove yourself, and you caused Sylvain and Ingrid to rush after you in order to protect you from your own stupidity. This means they were not on ideal footing when I struck at them and allowed me to put them directly on the back foot. Your death is yours alone to choose, but if you behave in this manner on the field, it will be that of your comrades you decide as well. To have pride in your skill is no sin — to value it above the life of your comrades is.”

The damning words held over them, and for all of Felix’s past cruel jabs, he now looked the feral one, even though his eyes flickered with guilt when they caught Ingrid and Sylvain’s concerned looks.

“To return to you, Ingrid and Sylvain, I do not fault you for rushing after him — there is nothing wrong with valuing the safety of a comrade. But I knew beforehand he would attempt this, and I saw in your eyes that you did too. If you were aware of it, it was your duty to at least attempt to calm him down before he rushed off. This was your failure in this bout.”

The two nodded, accepting the chastisement with an unsure cast to their expressions — no doubt wondering, like him, how they were supposed to reason with a Felix that barely listened to them whenever he got worked up.

“And now, Dimitri and Dedue,” she began again, and he felt himself lock up under the heavy mantle of shame. Had she noticed his loss of control at the end ? Was she going to castigate him for letting the students under his responsibility get taken down one by one, while he could do nothing but watch ?

“Dedue, a bodyguard is not a manservant. If you are going to be acting as Dimitri’s on the battlefield, then you mustn’t simply follow him wordlessly about. When he took off after me he was faster than you, and forced you to sprint and let down your guard to catch up with him. It is up to you, in these moments, to temper him if he is acting recklessly, and remind him of your presence. When he took off, you should have if not stopped him at least told him to slow down so you could arrive together, as neither of you were going to be fast enough to reach Annette in time anyway.”

His friend simply gave a serious nod, showing he’d understood the rebuke. Dimitri only wished he could get his nerves under control in such a manner.

“Dimitri. Your choice of a cautious initial approach was correct, and I am choosing — and hoping — to believe that the reason you did not hurry until Felix was knocked down was because you did not believe I would take him, Sylvain and Ingrid out this fast. You sped up to try and help Sylvain, but immediately slowed down when I took him out before you arrived. That was too cautious ; it gave me the time I needed to get a feel for the lance and hit Mercedes, and it gave me the space I needed to run off towards Ashe. Afterwards, you did the opposite : you rushed too aggressively, leaving your bodyguard behind and letting me pick the two of you off one after the other instead of facing me at the same time.

“Your decision to attempt to power through my defences rather than attempt to out-skill me was one of the better ones you could have taken, but strength is pointless if not tempered by precision. When you decided to use your lance like an oversized club, you left yourself wide open by focusing all your weight on the end of your spear rather than maintaining your stance, and that meant that all I had to do was step in to neutralise most of the force from your blow and catch you at a disadvantage.”

He gave a bitter, shame-tinged little smile as a sign of acknowledgment, knowing full well that all thoughts of strategy had mostly left him at that point. If she thought anything of it, she did not signal it. Instead, she started pacing a little on the spot, looking to all of them in turn.

“I believe that you now think you have a general idea of what went wrong here,” she began, and the class nodded confidently back.

“You are incorrect. There is one aspect to this exercise that you all failed at, to the last person. It is one of the most important ones, and if you take only one thing from my words, it will be this one. ”

Oh good, they had not quite had their fill of reproaches yet.

Calm and composed as she had been through the entire dressing down, all of them were taken by surprise when she suddenly barked out in an even sterner tone.

“Blue Lions ! Who is your house leader ?”

Dimitri froze, not having expected this, and watched in confusion as all the others turned towards him, though none of them voiced his name out loud.

It was at this precise point that he found the answer to an earlier question. When Lucina had been explaining the exercise, he’d wondered why she’d stared at him in particular.

She’d been warning him, he realised. She was watching him to see if he would take charge, or if the others would defer to her, if anything would happen.

How disappointed she must have been, to see a prince not even fit to lead seven people.

“Indeed, I have been given to understand you have all accepted to defer to his leadership for the year. So when the exercise began, why did none of you attempt to look to him for instructions or guidance ? For that matter, why did none of you speak to each other ? Why did none of you confer with each other or at least attempt to sort out their positioning ? At least attempt to come up with a rudimentary battle plan ? Once the fight began, not once did any of you attempt to communicate with each other. Once I told you the fight had begun and did not move, why did none of you take the time to discuss your approach ?”

Their little earlier confidence boost was long gone now, and they all stared at the ground with various guilty expressions. Even Felix, though one had to look past the layer of sheer frustration and the anger roiling off him in waves.

“I simply ask you to keep in mind that proper communication on the battlefield is key. It is often the difference between defeat or victory, and even more so between victory and success. A battle from which only half of you emerge might be a victory, but I doubt any of you would call it a success. So learn to mind and watch out for each other, that you never have to know that difference intimately.”

The solemn tone of her voice made it clear it was a lesson she herself had had to learn the hard way, and, to Dimitri at least, it was that detail which allowed her words to truly sink in and become a reality. 

This was a woman who could very well have seen her own Sylvain, Ingrid or Felix slain in battle, and who was doing her utmost to prevent them from having to live through such things. And though, in their case, she might have been a bit late (his heart squeezed a little at the passing thought of Glenn and the shadow his ghost cast over them), the intention did make him feel a little warm inside, almost enough to forget the burning self-loathing he was currently feeling for his failings.

Her tone of voice softened a little as she continued her address.

“I apologise if today’s lesson seemed overly brutal, but this is a lesson best taught harshly and as early as possible, before bad habits may be formed. Which reminds me : I will give the same exercise to the other two houses during my sessions with them, and I would appreciate if you were to keep what happened here from them, until I have run them through it. They will need to come into it blind in order for me to truly gauge their readiness.”

Finally, finally, she gave them a small, contrite smile, and the stoic, indomitable warrior they’d been training under finally turned back into the reserved, almost shy woman they’d met during dinner.

“I have no doubt given you a lot to think about, so for today I shall let all of you off early to meditate on what I have told you. You are all dismissed. Tomorrow, I will put up a board on mine and Robin’s office door with my available hours next week for one-to-one tutoring. Please write your name down in whichever slot you prefer, keeping in mind that it must be at least for the day following your booking. With that, you are dismissed.”

There was a collective relief among the group, and he felt he could almost see Ashe’s back unknot himself, so tense had he been. They all started to move towards the racks, ready to put their weapons back, when Lucina’s voice rang out one last time and froze him straight in his tracks.

“Dimitri, if you would please stay a little more ? I would like to discuss something with you.”

He didn’t think his nerves could take much more of this emotional whiplash.

Nonetheless, he turned back and headed towards her, after giving what he hoped was a reassuring nod in answer to Dedue’s questioning stare. Much as he appreciated the offer for moral support, he had a sinking feeling he’d want to be alone to hear whatever she had to say.

Lucina took one look at him, frowned, and then called out to the rest of the class, who were filing out.

“Blue Lions, one last thing before you leave. You are all citizens of Faerghus, are you not ?”

At the chorus of agreeing nods, she spoke yet another sentence he’d not been expecting.

“Outside these walls, when you go back to your lands and your families, who is your liege ? Ingrid ?”

“Dimitri,” she stated with confidence, every single inch of her looking like the knight she deserved to become.

“Sylvain ?”

“Dimitri,” he also answered, perhaps not quite as nobly, but no less firmly.

“Dedue ?”

“Prince Dimitri,” was his answer, ever stalwart.

“May I take it the rest of you agree with the general sentiment ?”

Once again, she was greeted by a chorus of nods, to which she gave them a small smile.

“Thank you. That is all I need to know. You may leave.”

Neither of them said anything as they watched the others stream out, until finally only the two of them were left.

Finally, he could take the silence no more.

“Why did you ask me to remain, professor ?”

Still she did not answered, smacking her lips as though silently searching for words.

“The duty of command, and of rule,” she began, and that was not the subject of conversation he’d been expecting. “is a burden too heavy for any one person to bear. So we divest ourselves of part of it, we delegate, we sleep less and work more in order to live up to its weight. And we inevitably come up short.”

She hummed a little dejectedly, melancholy clearly apparent and slightly at odds with what he felt was a very sombre take on kingship.

“But duty does not care for worth, Dimitri. I saw you, today. You were going to take centre, but when you saw Felix did, you folded without even attempting to contest it. When he charged forward, you were going to yell at him, but you did not.”

She breathed in, and through his shame-riddled dark musings he formed the distinct impression that what she was about to say was painful to her.

“Command scares you. Rulership scares you. Why, I know not and will not speculate ; you are not the first, and will assuredly not be the last to find the burden of decision-making daunting and struggles to act upon it. But my point, _Prince_ Dimitri,” she said, stressing the title. “is that your duty does not care about how well you exercise it, only that you do so. Your kingdom does not care about whether you are the right man to lead it, only that you do so. Your people do not care that you do not believe your position deserved, only that you fill it and act upon it now that they have seen you there. Today, you failed as a leader, yes. But when I asked the class who their leader was, none of them hesitated, not even Felix, who I am given to understand bears some enmity to you. When I asked them who their liege was, they likewise did not hesitate.”

She took a deep breath in, and he himself was struggling not to hyperventilate, as she started touching upon subjects he had no desire to talk about with anyone, let alone a stranger and foreigner. As he readied a cursory protest and excuse to run away, however, she picked up again.

“They have chosen you, Dimitri, so unless you accept throwing away that blue cape of yours, unless you decide to throw away your crown, then you will have to bear that burden, no matter your own wishes. Doubt yourself, fear, worry as much as is your right, and indeed as is the duty of any just and competent ruler, but _act_. Because a leader who does nothing is worse to his people than a ruler who errs.”

Looking back with mortification at that moment in the future, he would always keep in mind his instinctive reply as a prime example that he had indeed once been a teenager.

“And what would you know of the burdens I bear ?” he lashed out, restraint finally snapping as he rounded on her, staring at her in the eyes, trying to communicate the pain, rage and existential fear his kingship-to-come inspired him.

It was only now, so close to her, that he noticed in her left eye something beyond the pupil and iris one would expect to find, and the surprise did shock him out a little of his feelings.

“So you have noticed it.”

“What… is it ? Is it… a Crest ?”

“In a way,” she huffed a bit amusedly. “Our lands do not have Crests as you understand them. This is known as the Brand of the Exalt. A thousand years ago, the dragon Naga, the protector of our land, entrusted the sacred sword Falchion to the man who would eventually become the First Exalt in order to fight a great evil. To mark him as her champion, she branded him with her mark. That was all it was : no special powers, no godly prowess, simply a mark of her favour. And when he accomplished his mission and founded the country Robin and I call home, Ylisse, he became its ruler, and his children inherited both Falchion and the Brand, both as a sign of Naga’s favour and a duty to uphold her values.”

His anger almost forgotten, Dimitri, listened captivated, as it finally hit him for the first time that she had introduced himself earlier today as a princess. He’d completely wiped it from his mind in all the confusion following her introduction and the training debacle.

“You must understand that the Brand is not a Crest, and Falchion not what you refer to as a Relic. Falchion chooses its wielders. It will not let anyone it deems unworthy wield it, blood be damned. The Brand will not grant you any material gain, bar the obligation to be an exemplar. And it is known to all : across two whole continents, most will know to recognise Naga’s mark at a glance.”

She went back to staring into his eyes, and it hit him again just how noticeable and alien her eye felt now that he knew what lied in it.

“These duties have fallen to me, and every day I bear Falchion is a day I must strive to live to a thousand years of virtuous history from the line of the Exalts, and the lineage of the Hero-King Marth before them, and abide by the expectations of our millenia-old protector. And everywhere I go, the people need but look into my eye to know who my ancestors were. Every time I stray from my path, every time my conviction wavers, my blade will literally grow dull, as Falchion requires absolute clarity of purpose in order to cut.”

There was another pensive silence, and Dimitri was struck by the oddest notion that she didn’t sound very used to this whole opening up thing. Not that he minded having some time to mull over the implications of a weapon that punished you for hesitancy. How often would he himself fail to wound with such a weapon ? And, that dark part of his mind wondered, just how often would it cleave through his opponents, as he lost himself to rage ?

“House Lowell has received the honour and curse both to never be able to run away from their duty and obligations. And though you are not held to that standard, realise that what is a physical reality to us is still a truth shared amongst all leaders of this world. We must either step up to attempt that challenge, or give up and forever lose the right to our crowns.”

He expected this to lead to an ultimatum. Yet again, she took him by surprise.

“I have made the latter choice,” she told him, utterly flooring him. This picture perfect rendition of a warrior queen, giving up ? The thought seemed almost anathema to him. “As the eldest of the Lowell children, I had a taste of rulership in my father’s absence, and though I have been assured it is a mantle I bore competently, even in the dire times of war we saw, I was never as gladdened as the day I could hand my father’s crown back to him. And so, before the question of heirship could even be raised, I rescinded myself from any eventual succession. Now that the war is seen to, never since I was a child have I been as content with the hand I was dealt. My sister will be Exalt, and I will be glad to guide her if she so wishes, but the throne is hers to take.”

Once again, he had nothing to say. Just imagining the act of looking his uncle in the eye and telling him he was abdicating was enough to short-circuit him. And, deep inside him, a jealous part simmered in anger at the knowledge that she even had the option to nominate someone else.

“You could always choose to do so, if you so wish. But you do not strike me as someone who would — you _want_ to lead. That much is clear to me. So do.”

“It’s not that simple…” was the only reply he could manage, and he hated how childish that mutter made him sound.

She only smiled back.

“No, it is not. But this is a school, Dimitri. Here, you have the possibility to make mistakes and learn from them — and, if in doubt, to ask your teachers for help. Robin is my father’s chief advisor in matters of war and peace both, and he would be delighted were you to seek his counsel. I myself know intimately some of the issues that must trouble you, though we each manifest them in different ways. The Archbishop has almost single-handedly run the single greatest political power in Fódlan for decades now. Even your peers, if you are willing to trust them with the truth of your struggles, can help you see through what is best for you.”

“I… do not know if I am ready to do so quite yet.”

“Then do not. All I ask is that you remain aware of the possibilities being here offers you,” she simply told him, lacking any judgment in her tone.

She gave him another small mile that seemed almost fond, and he realised almost despite him that he returned it to her.

“Now go, Dimitri. And think on what I have told you, but not too much. There is peace still outside and inside these walls — learn to live it, and enjoy it.”

“Thank you, I shall keep it in mind,” he answered, in a slightly trembling voice (not that he’d admit it out loud).

It was slightly lame, but it was the best he could do right now after hearing her advice and her warnings, and a story he was not sure he should believe out of hand but that she’d told with the utmost sincerity.

“You should probably catch up with your friends now. I wager you could all use each other’s company after all this,” she told him with another encouraging smile.

“Ah, yes, thank you,” he fumbled over his words again, but headed off towards the exit, happy to have an excuse to be left to his thoughts.

“Oh, and Dimitri ? I meant what I said when I told you that strength was useless if not tempered by precision. You are not the first to suffer from trying to control prodigious strength, and luckily for you I happen to be well-suited to help you do so. Do seek me out next week for individual training.”

“Of course,” he nodded, and finally took his leave. As he turned the corner, he could have sworn he heard Seteth’s angry voice coming from the courtyard, but surely he’d have noticed him beforehand ?

He did not have the time to ponder, because he was greeted almost immediately by a worried trio of Dedue, Sylvain and Ingrid.

“Dimitri, is everything alright ?” the latter immediately inquired.

“Ah, yes. I’m afraid the professor had a special rebuke for my leadership during the battle, or lack thereof, that she felt more appropriate to deliver in private. Which reminds me, I must apologise for my poor performance during the fight, as a leader and a friend both.”

“Ah, nonsense, we all failed. But if the prince himself will apologise to me, who am I to refuse a favour owed ? Perhaps you could make your excuses by giving me a more private introduction to our new teacher, who seems to have taken a liking to you ?” teased Sylvain, and for all that it was a bit infantile it still felt familiar enough to help him unwind a little, though not quite enough, something his friend seemed to notice. “But seriously, Dima, are you okay ? You’re looking a bit rattled.”

“Yes…” he began, before wilting slightly at his childhood friends and Dedue’s deadpan stares. “Well, perhaps not quite. Lady Lowell has given me much to think about, and I think I must sort out my feelings on the matter before I can give you an answer.”

“Fair enough,” he conceded, as they made their way towards the gardens. “What’s she like teaching, anyway, when she’s not out to terrify us ? Can’t imagine there’s no middle ground between ‘merciless drill sergeant’ and ‘awkward stranger’.”

Dimitri thought about it for a little while, until a smile finally broke through on his face at a stray realisation.

“You know, now that I think about it, Ingrid, she is rather like you. Just a smidgeon more… intense.”

“Truly, a terrifying thought,” fake-shivered Sylvain, and the sound of the shin kick he received and his following protest did serve yet again to relax him. 

“Actually, Ingrid, I did find out more about that sword of hers, and I think you would appreciate the principle behind it…”

And for a moment, everything was just fine.

* * *

Robin didn’t even bother looking up from the mess of papers on his desk that formed the sum of his current efforts at crafting a curriculum when he heard the sharp rap on his door.

“Yes, come in !”

He still did not look up when the door opened and someone — no, two someones, one with a large gait but either very light or used to trying not to make noise, the other one much smaller but with a far more purposeful walk — walked in.

Well, that combination of footsteps gave him the information he needed to guess who it was anyway, so he saw no reason to interrupt his work to confirm it. He got two extra minutes of blessed silence until an irritated throat-clearing cough forced him to look upwards.

Looking up at who he now knew to be Hubert von Vestra, flanking his liege, he gave him the best dismissive side-eye he could, and affected a gruff, irritated tone.

“Well, out with it then, I haven’t got all day. If that was just a sore throat, there should be a jug of milk left next to that copy of the _Encyclopedia Bellicosa_ I nicked from Seteth’s office when he wasn’t looking.”

He knew he’d pegged the kid right the first time he’d seen him. He just screamed right-hand man with all his being, and his feathers were just as easy to ruffle as expected for those types.

“You — that is… You will show at the very least some basic courtesies in the presence of Lady Edelgard !” he sputtered, and Robin, well, he tried to take him seriously, he really did.

He failed.

“Look, Hubert — I can call you Hubert, right ? — you tailed me around the Monastery, which was incredibly rude, and I’ve yet to hear an apology for it, so this is all you’re getting. Considering your Lady Edelgard is here with you, I’m assuming it was done at her behalf, so I’m not going to go out of my way to be gracious to her. No offence meant, miss,” he added to her, “it’s just how these things go, you know how it is, you have me followed, I snub you at the Duchess’s summer garden party and then we burn each other’s countries down, the usual.”

“This is the future Empress of Adrestia you are addressing !—” began the other boy, the beginnings of what was no doubt a stern tirade building up already in his gullet, but no way was Robin going to sit through that.

“Yes, I’m sure that’s very impressive to you, but I keep a personal correspondence with a half-dozen rulers, have conversed with beings old and powerful enough some call them gods and can count some dragons amongst my close friends, so this will be much faster if you just assume I’m not really bothered and we all move on.”

“You !…” he began anew, but this time it was not Robin who interrupted him.

“Enough, Hubert. Clearly, the professor believes himself above courtesy here, and he is correct in pointing out we were the first to wrong him.”

And huh, that kid must be devoted, because no matter how sullen it made him or the death glare he gave him, he shut up instantly.

“Ah, thank you. So, now that we’re having a civilised conversation, what can I do for you, lady with excellent hair ?”

“Ah — I…” began a very confused von Hresvelg, before she shook her head and soldiered on. Shame, it looked like she’d caught on to the basics of what he was doing. “I had hoped to introduce myself formally and perhaps let us start the year off more auspiciously.”

Ah, the dignified noble graciously extending the hand of friendship of cooperation, which would have been unnecessary had they not messed up in the first place. Classic. She did seem surprisingly genuine about it, however, so for now he was choosing to mark it up as a product of her upbringing rather than maliciousness.

Time to push a little, then. Just to see how her composure holds. Really.

“Well, let it never be said I do not believe in the power of friendship and cooperation. Don’t worry about it, honest. For what it’s worth, I didn’t know my popping up here would ruin anybody’s secret plans or anything. Well, I probably wouldn’t have cared anyway, but you get me, right ?”

To her credit, she _almost_ didn’t tense, but he was simply better at this than she was. That self-control, however, spoke of practice, and more of it than he’d think appropriate for a teenager. Cutthroat local politics growing up, then ? Maybe succession crisis ? She was apparently the only heir left, and he’d heard the Emperor wasn’t exactly spry anymore. It was the most likely answer. 

“And just what are you trying to allude to ?” she challenged him, eyes narrowed, and her forehead scrunched a little in a way not unlike an offended kitten, as her retainer tried to put on an extra menacing pose again that really just made him look like a posturing mid-upper echelon Grimleal.

“Ah, nothing in particular. But you have a retainer and visibly right-hand man whose obvious specialisation lies in skulking around, and you set him on a complete stranger you knew mostly nothing about who’d just happened to arrive unpredicted in this place so you could take his measure. Be more careful with that stuff, you should have at the very least waited until it was confirmed that I would be staying, and possibly given it a day or two more to not make it _completely_ obvious it was a reaction to my unexpected arrival.

“The fact it was a kneejerk reaction instantly told me outside interference was a genuine worry for you, and that therefore you were up to something within the monastery,” he explained, taking pity on her internally screaming face. “You’ve gone too out of your way to be discrete for it to be Church-approved, too, so you should have just gotten to know me at dinner a bit before having me followed and gauged whether I was an ally of Rhea. Instead you just sat smack dab next to the person I caught tailing me, immediately telling me who it was he answered to. Consider investing in more disposable pawns, because having your easily recognisable right-hand man as your go-to secret operations person means if he gets even just seen, you’re immediately telling everyone who they’re dealing with.”

“… And what exactly is it you are aiming to accomplish by saying all this ?”

Truly, an excellent recovery. Girl was way wet behind the ears, but she was earnest in her efforts at least. Not very good at playing dumb, unfortunately.

“Isn’t it obvious ? I am anow apparently a professor here, so I’m teaching. Do keep up. Feel free to treat all this as hypotheticals if it helps you feel more comfortable.”

Well, judging by the complicated expression she was sporting, she was definitely not used to dealing with his type. Better to push on, then : if he gave her time to pick herself up, she was likely to just try and fit him into one of her neat little boxes and it would take a while to break her out of it again.

“So, as I was saying, easily recognisable executants. See, there’s nothing wrong with having a recognisable spy/assassin/other shady business man, but you need to manage their use carefully. Sometimes, you just have to use them because they’re either the most competent or the most trustworthy you’ve got. But sometimes, you want what they’re doing to be known. Why ? Because it sends a message in and of itself.

“Most of the time, people interpret this as having the option to put on a show of intimidation to watchers — ‘we can do this, we can get you, and you can’t stop us, and you can’t even outright prove it was us’. While you can do that, it’s stupid and a waste of effort. There are far more cost-efficientand frightening ways to make threats. I might come back to those later actually, that’s always a useful skill. See, Hubert, by this time, I’m sure anyone who cares to be following your moves has figured out you’d be the one Edelgard here would send to investigate something she has a personal interest in.” 

He watched the lanky boy stew in anger, looking almost to ready to interrupt him yet still hung to his sweet, sweet words of wisdom. That was the best part about the pragmatic types — you could push and push and push, but so long as you showcased you were useful they’d take it, no matter how much they wished they wouldn’t.

“While it does mean that anyone watching you can get an idea of what matters might preoccupy your liege at that point in time, it also means that _you_ are the one in control of what information reaches them. For example, let’s go back to you following me earlier this week. If you had made your presence a bit clearer after my meeting with the Archbishop but then not followed us and instead stayed behind at their office, I could have assumed that you had just been scouting out our affiliation to her and that, satisfied with what you’d seen, went back to following her. Now apply this to a larger scale. 

“For the sake of making it easy for someone like me who’s not kept up with the local politics and their subtleties, let’s imagine you want to kill Claude von Riegan for whatever reason. Edelgard, you can go out of your way to be a bit friendlier to Claude than you are to, say, Dimitri — though not too much. Enough to show you don’t mind him, but making it clear you don’t have any undue interest in him. Then one day, Dedue — that’s his name, right ? Dimitri’s bodyguard — enters his room and finds a shadow that looks suspiciously like Hubert rifling through his stuff. Hubert manages to get away without being caught, and despite suspicions can’t be identified with absolute certainty. Accusing him is tantamount to accusing you, and that’s a big deal, so they’ll hold out on it, but tensions increase between Lions and Eagles. You try to make common ground with your good friend Claude von Riegan, and though he’s hesitant, it’s clear that you’re hoping for his support against Dimitri. Then one evening, Claude is found dead in his room. The knife used to kill him was of, say, Almyran make ? That’s a country that the Alliance has problems with, right ? Anyhow, it’s clearly a plant but at the same time still an obvious enough answer that it _could_ just be a clumsy and very dramatic statement. Who do you think committed the murder ?”

He looked at them, all smiles, tone voluntarily much too light for what he was discussing,

“His _good friend_ Edelgard von Hresvelg, whom everyone knows is preoccupied with the Lions and was in fact actively courting Claude’s support against them ? No way, why would she do that ? The Blue Lions, on the other hand, well, haven’t they just been a bit aggressive lately ? And wasn’t Claude a bit too friendly with Edelgard, who was messing with them ? Or could it really be the Almyrans, trying to hit at the Alliance’s leadership ? Doesn’t the Archbishop have an Almyran assistant, who could have access to the rooms ?”

He showed teeth, and was rewarded by the tiniest flinch from the young von Vestra boy. To her credit, Edelgard remained impressively impassive, but her eyes betrayed her. She was vastly uncomfortable with the ease with which he’d planned this out, if he’d had to guess.

“Food for thought. For homework, I expect you two to come back here same time next week and give me a detailed plan on… Hmm, let’s find something that you probably won’t need to do… How you would blame Edelgard von Hresvelg for the murder of… that blonde girl from the Lions that looks like she would make a great murder victim. Madeleine ? No, no…” he hesitated, ignoring the looks of utter confusion in front of him. “Mercedes ! That’s it. Framing yourself for the murder of Mercedes, imagining you were the Archbishop. I’m giving you an easy one, she even comes with an easily recognisable and notoriously unsubtle right-hand man.”

He shot them the brightest smile he could.

“Same time next week, remember. And if you do well, I might actually listen to the both of you next time,” he winked at them. “I am serious, however. The two of you are obviously involved in shady business, and while I don’t particularly care, you’re clearly bumbling around the whole sneaky thing competence-wise, and that’s just a pet peeve of mine. You’ve clearly got a head on your shoulders and it seems apparent to me you’re self-taught in this whole cutthroat thing, so there’s no reason you can’t learn to be better., and I abhor wasted potential. Now off you go ! Lucina should be back from the baths soon, and that’s a reunion that will be far more pleasant for me if there are no prying eyes when she arrives,” he confided in them in a mock-whisper, assuming correctly that embarrassment would override their capacity to feel indignant at his treatment of them.

They’d learn to see through such transparent attempts at derailing the conversation eventually, but in the meantime, they’d have to learn by example.

"Oh and Hubert, I'm glad you found my notes useful. Don't think I didn't notice you've improved your control over your mana leakage, do keep it up. Ta-ta !"

They apparently had some way to go before they got there, clearly, considering they did not manage much beyond sputtering and, in the Black Eagles leader’s case, furious blushing while he physically shooed them out of his office, and all but slammed the door in their face.

Tough kids to deal with, these two, but he had a foot in the door now. He had no doubt they’d be back next week, after many days spent panicking over what he’d said and poring over his every word to determine just how much he knew (barely anything at all, and certainly nothing he hadn’t told them outright).

Plus, two side projects in one. Turn these two into decent politicians that wouldn’t get chewed over and spat out by the first mildly savvy sleazebag, and try to work out what shadowy intrigue was happening without ever outright investigating it. He couldn’t wait.

A look at his desk stopped his enthusiasm straight.

But first, he had a curriculum to draft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, originally I was going to pretty much handwave the acctual Lucina v Lions fight, right up until I wrote the lead-up to it and realised that I pretty much wrote one of these early tutorial FE boss battles, with the one single opponent who's stronger than any of your party members just sitting in the middle of the map, waiting for you to challenge them. I even had the Arena Ferox sort of vibe going on with Lucina front and centre, and I couldn't resist trying to translate one of those into an actual fight scene. Think I did mostly alright, though it's a little wonky in places, but it was worth the experiment anyway.
> 
> And finally, some early house leaders interactions with Dimitri and Edelgard. Been waiting a while to get started on these, and this is just the beginning !


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There, a chapter - sooner than I'd anticipated too, though it still got slowed down a little due to a handful of IRL problems. Nothing too bad, but they're a thing, so expect that to maybe affect update rate in the future. Once again, bit busy at the moment so it's less re-read than usual, apologies for any obvious typos. Anyway, I hope you enjoy a chapter of nothing but people talking at each other !  
> This chapter brought to you by an album I randomly found at the bottom of one of the boxes I was unpacking, Soma's Jewel and the Orchestra, which I had completely forgotten about but used to love when it came out some time ago and holds up much better than most of my teenage interests, so long as you don't mind fairly obvious French accents in your English garage rock (and can find all the damn songs on the internet - not exactly an international success there).

Rhea could hardly contain her excitement, and it was taking all the self-control she’d learned from her many years alive not to break out into a run, seizing the person in front of her by the shoulders and shaking her until she answered the one true question that was trying to burst its way past her lips : _Mother, is this you ?_

But there was no recognition in those eyes, on that blank lifeless face which had inherited so much of Sitri that she was not quite sure why Jeralt was even insisting on trying to lie to her. Even if she could not feel her mother’s Crest Stone resonating with her, buried deep in the girl’s chest, she could have guessed in an instant who she was. So she restrained herself, and instead did her best to play the kindly Archbishop.

The joy that overwhelmed her at the possibility that she had finally succeeded was enough to wipe the pang of regret she felt whenever Jeralt looked at her like he used to her sleazier petitioners, how he eyed the door and windows as soon as he stepped in and spoke to her like a beast easily angered, rather than the friend and family member she’d been before.

It overwhelmed the guilt at Seteth’s confused and slightly betrayed look, trying to understand why she’d just offered a full professorship to Jeralt’s daughter out of thin air without even warning him.

It was even enough to overwhelm the feeling of extreme weariness and irritation that threatened to drown out all the rest when she heard her latest local annoyance arrive, before she even saw a whiff of him.

It started with hurried footsteps, and one of her knights loudly declaring (with a slightly pleading tone) that she was in a meeting currently, as though that had worked the last time he’d tried. The enthusiastic ‘I know, that’s why I’m here’ he got in reply was about what she expected. But today, today of all days, she could not let him give her the runaround.

She would remain unflappable.

“Jeralt ! You grizzled bastard, how come I have to hear you’re coming through the grapevine ? Lucina’s been missing a decent sparring partner !”

She managed, but it was a close thing. That was not what she’d expected.

“Robin ? How did _you_ and that girl of yours end up here ?”

“We’re teachers now ! They thought I couldn’t just walk in and ask for a job, but I proved them all wrong !”

Well, it was time to take back control of the situation, as he was picking up the pace and using that cheerfully obnoxious tone that preceded his conversation-derailing tangents.

“ _Robin_ ,” she coughed slightly to get his attention. “I believe I’ve made it clear to you that my office is not for you to casually stroll into, particularly not when I am entertaining guests,” she added pointedly.

It was probably pointless to tell him, as she was not willing to burn the goodwill necessary to actually enforce anything upon him quite yet, but it at least asserted to the others in the room that she was in charge here, something her formerly-latest hire had a way of making people forget.

“You did ! I just chose not to listen !” he happily crowed, ignoring the bristling of her entourage at the words. “But look at you too, kid ! I see you’ve been keeping up your training !” he exclaimed, drawing close to Byleth, and she suffocated the pang of jealousy and protective anger the gesture stoked in her.

“Chose to stick to the sword in the end, didn’t you ?” he said, after taking a good look at her arm and shoulder muscles, giving them a quick, almost medical feel. “Thought the old goat would have desperately tried to have you pick up the lance as primary. Still, Lucina will be glad to have a workout buddy for drills. How come you lot are all here, anyway ?”

Before either Jeralt, Byleth (and just how did they all know each other ?) or Mother forbid anyone else had the time to give him an answer, she stepped in. Again.

“Robin. In case I was not clear the previous time, you will _behave_ , or I will throw you out of this room. Personally. Am I understood ?”

If there was one definite advantage to him knowing the general truth of what she was, it was most definitely that he never doubted her or dismissed her when she resorted to threats. In a way, it was oddly good to have someone who both understood the power she could bring to bear, and could make a justified target for it.

She watched him deflate slightly with immense satisfaction, chalking it up as a grand victory.

“Yes, yes, your Archbishopness, I’ll keep mum,” he sullenly replied, and she was in too good of a mood to harp on him for the continued disrespect. She’d gain nothing for it anyway.

“Don’t push it. And your arrival here, unexpected as it may have been, does at least serve a purpose for once. Professor Robin, may I introduce you to professor Byleth, your newest colleague, and Jeralt, who will be resuming his position as Captain of the Knights of Seiros after a long absence. Though it seems introductions may be superfluous ?” she added, not even trying to hide she was fishing for information.

She was perfectly entitled to know about her professors’ past dealings with each other, after all.

Surprisingly, it was Jeralt who answered her, still looking very puzzled at what had just happened. Which was unsurprising ; after all, he’d never seen her tolerate such disrespect from anyone. Hopefully, he’d never have to see it again, too.

“Well, Archbishop, as I told you, I run a mercenary company now, and was hired for an escort job with a trade caravan heading from Arianrhod to Fhirdiad a couple months ago. Robin and Lucina were traveling with it too, and they were decent sparring partners, so we sympathised, and then parted ways once arrived. First and last time I saw him, though.”

Archbishop, not Rhea. She smothered that little pang of regret again, and the angry one too. When had she ever done him any true wrong ? Anyhow, that sounded like a reasonable enough explanation, which, while suspicious in itself considering the people involved, would be sufficient for now.

“A fortuitous coincidence, then, I suppose,” was all she said on the matter, and it seemed only Robin picked up on her skepticism, giving her a little self-satisfied smirk that she was beginning to identify as a sign he was attempting to rile her up rather than genuinely getting one past her.

“Sure was, wasn’t it ? Want me to show them around ?”

“Jeralt knows the grounds, and he and I have further things to discuss. As for Byleth, I had hoped the house leaders might give her a tour and introduce her to the students ? She will be taking charge of one of the houses, and I was hoping she might get to know them before making her choice ?”

“Ah, yeah, figures,” he answered, before turning towards the door. By his tone, she knew that little tidbit had immediately piqued his interest, but he for once seemed to realise there was a time and a place for some matters. “Claude ! Stop eavesdropping for a second and pick her up, would you ?”

There was the sound of someone dropping from the rafters and the guard at her door cursing, before said door opened and a slightly chastened but easily grinning Claude von Riegan walked in.

“Aw, Prof, how’d you find me out ?” he whined playfully, and that seemed to be the sum total of his apology for listening in.

“I didn’t,” Robin smirked back. “I just figured that sounded like the sort of thing you’d be doing. Anyway, you up for it ? And no trying to hog her to yourself, I know Edelgard and Dimitri are just outside the corner, ran past them on my way here.”

“Hey, Prof, you’ll wound a man’s self-worth with that sort of talk ! I’m an honest and upstanding noble scion, didn’t you know ? Anyway, Teach, just follow the guide if you will ?”

Mother, but those two were insufferable whenever put in the same room. 

Byleth, however, had taken the whole discussion in stride without ever showing the slightest hint of any emotion on her face. Looking towards her father, she seemed to receive permission, as she just nodded at him, then Robin, gave her a flat “Archbishop”, and fell into step behind Claude, exiting the room, soon followed by her knights as she silently conveyed to them her desire to speak with Jeralt alone.

Which just left her, Jeralt, Seteth and Robin.

The air was thick with tension, and she did not know how to get the latter two to exit the room without inflating it further.

Jeralt, she had a fairly good idea of his grievances. And he was naturally wary of Seteth. But there was also some defiance towards Robin, even though they’d seemed friendly earlier ? Perhaps he was just tainted by his unexpected association with her.

Seteth was angry at her for failing to warn him about what had just transpired, or explaining anything to him. He was also wary of Jeralt, and naturally irritated by Robin.

Robin was all smiles and looking carefree as ever, but behind his eyes lurked that little spark that was birthed whenever he’d noticed something _interesting_ , and his considering glances at her and Jeralt were not putting her at ease.

Jeralt was too much on the defensive to speak up first. Seteth was trying to restrain himself in the presence of others. So naturally, it was going to be up to either her or Robin to break the silence. He would only aggravate the situation in order to help sate his curiosity, so it had to be her.

Mind made up, she just gave him a warning stare, boring a hole through his eyes, promising bloody retribution if he messed around at this precise moment.

For an instant, as she saw him open his mouth, she thought she would finally have to follow through.

“Well, I suppose I’ve overstayed my welcome,” he began, smiling kindly, and though she desperately wanted to relax, that alone was enough to set up all of the alarm bells in her mind.

She was correct to doubt him, though yet again he went at an angle she hadn’t foreseen.

“I know an awkward family reunion when I see one, after all !” he gaily added, and she had to resist the urge to snap her jaws at him.

“ _What ?_ ” she and Jeralt both hissed at him, uncomprehending.

“Well, the last time I saw two people this awkwardly hostile with each other was that time I first met my evil twin brother. Also the time the Empress of Chon’sin met her brother-turned-traitor on the battlefield in single combat. Or that time with the son of Duke Virion and Duchess Cherche after meeting with his parents again for the first time in like ten years. Anyway, point is, if you two don’t have any family history, I’ll give Seteth’s _Encyclopedia_ _Bellicosa_ back,” he told them matter-of-factly, as though it were obvious and also not completely wrong.

“YOU were the one who had it all along ? I have been searching for it everywhere—” her advisor began, but was promptly ignored.

“Besides, I just had to ask around a little bit to find out you both have Crests of Seiros, and while I don’t know much about your whole genetics fetish thing, given your past history, it seems more likely you two have some kind of relation beyond the professional than Jeralt secretly being an Imperial heir or something,” he added.

“Robin, you…” she began, but could not find what it was exactly she was trying to articulate. He was _technically_ wrong, yet fundamentally right, and more importantly, she could not deny him thoroughly right in front of her former sort-of son-in-law.

“Anyway, I’ll see myself out. Jeralt, come hit Lucina and I up for a drink tonight or something ! Come on, Seteth, come with me, you won’t believe where I found your book ! What do you know, it was sitting right on my desk all along ! I wonder how it ever got there !”

As he immediately caught Seteth’s attention again, she took a moment to appreciate his gift for infuriating people. Or rather, she would call it a gift were it unintentional — she could see in his eyes the look of someone who was acting very meticulously to ensure a given outcome. And as he began dragging her advisor out of the room with him, with poor Seteth almost entirely oblivious to his current predicament, she was even slightly thankful, though begrudgingly so. 

His annoyingly chipper chatter slowly faded down the hallway, echoing back to them.

“Oh and I know it looked like an old copy, but the author honestly seemed to know nothing about mountain ambushes, so I took the liberty to cross out all the stupid sections and make a few notes in the margins to correct him, I hope you don’t mind ? Come on, I’ll show you…” he urged, and she could not hear what he offered as they finally faded away.

Leaving her alone withJeralt.

There was silence for a moment between them, as they both tried to figure out how to talk to each other without picking at old scabs, badly healed, but in the end it was a snort from Jeralt that broke the status quo.

“Well, you certainly don’t keep the same kind of company you used to. Wouldn’t have pegged you for employing ill-mannered heretics — if I’d known I could get away with behaving like that around you, all those official functions would have been far less boring.”

An olive branch, which she gladly took, ignoring the suggestion in her mind that she should probably have been the one to offer it. With a soft, slightly stilted laugh, she tried to figure out an answer.

“Robin is… trying, at times, but he is competent enough that we must tolerate some of his eccentricities. Besides…”

She was hardly the gambling type, but thinking back on her previous interactions with the traveler and the feeling of playing catch-up she had been getting since he and Lucina had turned up, perhaps the reason she was not winning was precisely that : she did not dare gamble.

So she took a leap of faith.

“Jeralt,” she said, tone very careful and much gentler than he’d expected, judging by his surprise. “I have hired Robin because he is far too knowledgeable on many subjects, including some he should have no idea about for a foreigner. I know you doubt me, and I know not how change your mind, but at the very least please listen to this : do not trust him. I have kept him at the Monastery because it is the only place I may keep an eye on him, but something about him makes me deeply uncomfortable.”

He did not answer for a while, ruminating on her words. She allowed him that moment.

“You are hardly one,” he eventually settled on, “to talk to me about _trust_.”

Much as she felt the barb unnecessary, she let it slide. She was here to get him in her corner, not establish that she was correct.

“Perhaps. But if not trust in me,” she answered, “then at least realise that there is _something_ about Byleth that caught his eye during our meeting, and he intends to investigate it.”

“And what would you care ?” was his immediate answer, hackles immediately raised and eyes narrowed.

Well, how to play that one ? Well, perhaps she should simply take a book from the page of her instructors.

“Because I understand you do not wish me to be part of my granddaughter’s life, but I will not let her be a possible madman’s pet,” she dropped, and prayed to Mother that she was not making a huge mistake.

“… That lie was never gonna work, was it ? She looks just like Sitri, minus the hair,” and his resigned tone was sweeter to her than any honeyed words could have been. It was the tone of someone who was accepting defeat. “Should have known you’d figured it out as soon as you offered her that job.”

“It was not one of your better fibs, but then again, honesty always suited you better,” she smiled. “Do not worry, you have been clear enough. I will not attempt to seek her out beyond professional duties, if she does not try to do so herself.”

The words burned at her mouth, but she forced them through. After all, there were plenty of things that could be justified by professional duties. And more importantly, if she knew Jeralt well enough still…

“… Alright, but no funny business. I’ll do the job, and she’ll do hers, but if I find out you’re messing with her, I’m out. And I’ll hold you to your word,” he began, and she prayed yet again that she hadn’t misread him.

“… And I guess, if it all goes alright, maybe eventually I’ll tell her the truth about you.”

Victories, she thought even as she put on a grateful smile and started catching him up on what he had missed at the Monastery, were always sweeter when they came grouped together. 

He was still cautious and angry, perhaps even a little scared of her. He was still not trusting her. But it was a start.

And all it had taken was a little patience, and a little foolishness in equal measure.

Perhaps she too was learning something from her guests, after all.

“Perhaps I might even be there then, that you may also tell me why you left. I will be curious to hear it,” she could not resist adding, old betrayals rushing to the surface.

Then again, perhaps it was best not to emulate all of their habits.

* * *

Jeralt thanked the Goddess that the Horse & Wagon was still standing twenty years later, still had the same owner and his tab open (the only one he’d ever payed in full, because you didn’t cross the bartender who lived next to your home), and more importantly still had the perfect ratio between ale quality and cost of a pint, because after today he was going to need to drink a lot, and he wasn’t sure his drinking companions for the night were going to be any help.

Truth be told, he’d have rather gotten utterly shitfaced all on his own, but of course Rhea expected him to pick up the job bright and early next morning, so if he didn’t want to be bored out of his mind he was going to need either some company to pass the time he couldn’t fill with alcohol, or someone to drag his sorry arse back to the monastery.

Goddess, the monastery. Ugh.

“You know, if you’d told us you used to work here, we could have asked you for a letter of introduction and this would have all been way easier. Apparently Rhea’s rule about hiring unknown charming young people of dubious background and unknown qualities only applies to your daughter,” said the second chief annoyance in his life at the moment as though he couldn’t see him fishing for information from miles away.

“Don’t reckon a letter from me of all people would have done you much good, kid. Probably the opposite. Besides,” he added, allowing as much surliness as he could muster into his tone, “I don’t remember you telling me you were planning on getting mixed up with the Church.”

He was a mercenary in a tavern. Fishing for information in such an environment was almost second nature.

“That is because we were not planning to do so originally,” chief annoyance number three interceded. Well, that was unkind — Alois probably ranked above her, and Lucina was an alright sort, if a little uptight. Definitely a noble of some kind, but at least she didn’t have that stupid mask on anymore. It’s just that her being around usually meant that Robin was too. “However, the merchant who can get us out of Fódlan lives in Garreg Mach, and we found out upon our arrival that we had severely underestimated the cost of safe passage through the Veil, so we were forced to seek out alternate means of securing income than caravan escorts. We learned about the Academy, and figured we could ply our trade there.”

Well that was a whole lot of bullshit, but he honestly couldn’t tell whether it was true bullshit or complete tripe.

Wait, something about that struck at distant memories.

“A merchant who can smuggle you out through the Veil right under the Church’s nose ? You mean Anna’s still around ?” he asked in disbelief, staggered that she’d managed to outsmart Rhea that long.

“Yup, ain’t no gods that can stand between one of the Annas and her clientele,” answered the white-haired menace with a smarmy smile, as though that meant anything. 

What was he even on about ? Well, he knew when someone was having fun at his expense, and he didn’t have the energy to call him out on it.

How the fuck was she still around anyway ? Rhea was not too keen on outsiders coming in and out of her continent (because let’s face it, it basically was), and Anna arrived shortly before he left, so she’d been doing this for what, twenty years ? That was pretty impressive.

“That’s right ! So better be piling up that coin, buster, or you can sit on that little boat ride of yours !”

Jeralt was a little ashamed to admit that he was deep enough in his cups he’d not even heard her coming, and couldn’t help the little startled jump that came reflexively when the loud accusation rang out right by his ear.

Right behind him, grinning like a maniac, was the same fresh-faced shopkeep he’d last met some fifteen years ago, thereabouts ? If he remembered well, it was on the road to Nuvelle.

Identical.

Well, that was mildly worrying, but he couldn’t exactly cast stones for being ‘well-preserved’.

“Well, in the spirit of appeasement, how about we spend some of that coin on you ? Your first three drinks are on me !”

“So stingy ! You could spot a girl out for a night, you know !”

“I was at your sister’s wedding, I know what happens when someone gives you lot a blank cheque for anything, I had to get Gaius to sneak out some of Plegia’s coffers and blame it on Grimleal loyalists to reimburse Maribelle. Make it five and we’ll spot you though.”

“Deal !” the merchant happily crowed, as Lucina heaved a long sigh of forlorn suffering, nursing a cup of wine and looking completely out of place.

Okay, so these two not only knew each other, but well enough that Robin had been funding a family wedding. Alright, everything was clear now.

Like hell it was.

“How the fuck do you lot know each other anyway ? I thought this was your first time in Fódlan ?”

Next to him, Anna lit up.

“Jeralt the Blade Breaker, I’ll be damned ! I knew there was something to the rumours !” she exclaimed, staring him down. “I never forget a client, especially not when they send me some referrals ! Speaking of never forgetting, you’ve aged pretty well too, ain’t you ?” she asked with an appreciative look up and down, which he bravely chose to completely ignore and not think about.

“Don’t ask me why and I won’t ask you the same, that a deal enough for you ?” he grunted, noting sullenly that Lucina had definitely filed that tidbit away.

“It’ll do for now !” was her answer, and it didn’t really reassure him a bit.

“Since you mention referrals, whatever happened to Gregor ? Figured the bounty hunters ended up catching up with him, since I never heard of him again, but I guess he got to you ? Good on him, he was a decent enough sort. Good merc too.”

Surprisingly, the answer didn’t come from him, but from Robin, who’d just made it back, having gone to fetch Anna a drink and top himself up.

“HA !” he yelled, slamming down the drinks on the table with force as Anna broke off into a cackle and even Lucina gave a startled yet amused smile. “I knew his accent was familiar, I knew it ! Gregor’s totally from Brigid, isn’t he ?” he asked excitedly.

“Yeah, you know him ?”

“Big guy, be talking funny, refers to himself in the third person, drinks way too much ?”

“Sounds about right,” he shrugged, though internally he was beginning to wonder just who the fuck these two _didn’t_ know and whether he’d misjudged them that badly.

“Well, funny you should mention him, because I employed his services for three years or so in the Ylissean army, and he’s technically still on retainer from me and Chrom, since that was the condition for keeping his veteran’s stipend and his wife wouldn’t let him lose the income.”

Okay, so Robin was casually dropping on him he used to be in command of an army, that was cool, he was just rolling with that.

“Huh. Wouldn’t have thought him the type to catch himself… a… shrew….” he trailed off, staring at Anna, who was howling with laughter, as a horrifying realisation began to settle in his gut and he recalled Robin’s earlier anecdote.

It was Lucina that took pity on him.

“Yes, Gregor is a good friend of ours, and he married Anna’s sister a few months before we left. It was… quite a day,” she attempted to put politely, which knowing Gregor meant most of the guests woke up not remembering what happened in a burned-down tavern. Guy was the only person he knew with a worst luck than him when it came to watering holes.

“… Do all of you work on this whole shady knowing everyone shtick, or does it just come naturally to you ?”

“Little of column A, little of column B,” was Robin’s cheerful answer as Anna raised her pint and shouted ‘hear, hear’. “Speaking of people we know, here’s your daughter finally joining us, it seems. Oi, Byleth ! Over here !” he yelled, gesticulating like a sailor’s kid waving at all the boats leaving the docks.

He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. On one hand, he was happy to see her again, but he wasn’t sure he wanted her spending any more time with these lunatics than was necessary.

Though they were colleagues, now, weren’t they ? Goddess help him, and preferably Byleth too. What a fucking day.

“So, the kids have been giving you the sales pitch ?”

“Yes,” was all she replied, and for a foolish moment he hoped her laconic answers would be enough to deter the questions, as he flagged down a waitress to get Byleth a pint.

“Any thoughts ? Curious as to whom you might pick. How’d you end up catching their attention, anyway ? Noticed they seemed quite taken with you, from what little I saw.”

Byleth seemed pensive for a moment, and he was at least glad for that. She was taking this seriously, despite her lack of understanding of just how much fucking politics she was about to find herself mired into.

“We were resting up from a job at Remire village and they were on a camping trip nearby when they were accosted by bandits. The professor they were with apparently fled and left them, and so they ran away and made it to the village, but the bandits followed them — it seems they were specifically after Edelgard. With our help, they defeated them, and then the Knights of Seiros arrived and brought us here.”

Jeralt immediately hated the naked interest that drooled from Robin’s pores at the story. He’d picked up on something there, something which everyone else had missed.

“Is _that_ what happened, then ? How interesting. And that professor was supposed to be the latest candidate for leading a house, which does partly explain your hurried appointment - the alternative is Jeritza, and, well, you'll see for yourself. Any idea who you’ll be picking then ?”

“In truth, I am unsure. They are very different groups, but I believe each have their own shortcomings I could attempt to remedy. But I do not know where my strengths would best be applied, or where I would find myself most content.”

The deadpan tone did not fool him for a minute, and, surprisingly, didn’t seem to fool the rest of the table either, as all of them looked at her seriously. This really _was_ troubling her, wasn’t it ? Well, let’s see what words of fatherly wisdom he could scrounge up from—

“Robin, Lucina, if either of you have further insight into the students that you believe could help me make my choice, it would be much appreciated.”

That went straight through his heart. Was this what they called growing up ? HIs daughter turned to shady strangers for advice rather than him ?

He shook himself clear. He might have been going a bit too heavy on the drink, there.

“Well, let’s break it down a little for you, shall we ? Fundamentally, their biggest shortcoming is the same, simply for different reason : they’re not united. 

“The Deer are the easiest : as individuals, they mostly get along fine, minus Lorenz, but a good kick to the face should fix him up. What they need is purpose, or duty, or massive debt, or anything that gives them something to work towards, because honestly most of them seem like they’re just along for the ride. So basically, what you can bring there is mercenary discipline. They’re probably the easiest ones to have fun with, but taking them on would give you the more ungrateful role of the three. Also, funny as he may be, Claude’s probably a pain to deal with if you’re trying to be serious, kid’s cagier than me with any personal info.”

“Tricky, too,” interceded Anna. “Bit too desperate to get his hands on some poison and anti-venom ingredients, and also thought he could get away with stiffing me on prices. The nerve !” she huffed, displeased at the memory. “Got him in the end, though,” she winked at Jeralt with an impish smile. “Ain’t no one getting out of my claws once I’ve caught them,” she added sultrily, staring at him, and there was definitely no subtext there. None.

“Blue Lions. Unlike the other two, they are weirdly enough mostly bound together by purpose. They’re all united behind their leader, though some to a bigger degree than others, and they’re pretty much all invested in bettering themselves. If you go with them, you’d need first and foremost to be an exemplar, both as a warrior they can learn from, and as a model of a leader that Dimitri can work off. Kid’s got some major confidence and anger issues, from what Lucina said,” he continued, tipping his mug at her. “Might have some competition from her, though, she’s got a soft spot for them and I hear it’s reciprocal,” he grinned at his partner.

To his surprise, the usually stoic woman simply blushed and looked down (still nursing that cup of wine from earlier — lightweight).

“Anyway, I’d imagine it’s a demanding and intense job, but a fairly easier and rewarding one, if you want it. Black Eagles, well…” he trailed off a little, and Jeralt did not much like the glint that entered his eyes. “What the Eagles need first and foremost is trust. They need to be forged into a group, because right now they’re just people hanging around. Edelgard and Hubert have their own purposes that they’re not sharing with anybody, Caspar and Linhardt are friends, and I’ve gotten Petra and Dorothea to talk, but that’s about the sum total of the actual positive relationships there. Basically, you need to make these clashing personalities manage to work together, and unite them under a leader who doesn’t trust them and is not near ruthless enough for the kind of ruler she’s trying to become. Honestly, this one’s the biggest challenge, but seems like the most fun puzzle to solve. If you’re me, that is,” he smirked again.

Ergh, this was why he couldn’t trust the smarmy bastard. He saw way too much. Still, he was kinda glad he was advising Byleth to stay away from the Imperials. He’d not heard anything good about the Empire’s political happenings in years, possibly even a decade.

And then his hopes were suddenly dashed.

“Still, if you want my opinion, you should totally pick the Eagles !”

Why.

“Why ?” Byleth questioned him, thankfully voicing his query out loud. He took several long chugs of his drink. He was way too sober for this.

“Honestly ? Unless she’s got a particular very pointed interest in how one is supposed to position their hips when practicing swordsmanship, she’s been checking out Lucina _hard_ when she thinks no one is looking, and I think it’d be hilarious to give her another blue-haired warrior woman teacher to try and pretend she's not staring at !”

He spat everything he was drinking right on the table (and a little on Robin — much deserved, in his opinion) while next to him Anna picked up again with that aggravating cackling of hers and Lucina also sputtered, though he noted a little jealously she’d not spilled a drop of her drink. _Nobles_.

“Edelgard has not been— I mean—”

“ _You what ?_ ”

Lucina and him both yelled at the same time, outraged for very different reasons.

“Dear, I’m sorry, but she completely does and you’re just oblivious. At least it’ll give her something to bond over with Petra !”

“ _PETRA ?_ ”

“And Jeralt, don’t you think it would be hilarious to see the imperial heir trying to act all formal while pretending not to be ragingly attracted to your daughter ?”

“ _NO !_ ”

“Well, it was just an idea, it’s all up to Byleth, isn’t it ?” he said, eyes twinkling, looking amused like he was not trying to throw his daughter into a political mess.

Next to them, Anna was still cackling, and was now grabbing onto his shoulder to keep herself upright, shaken with spasms of laughter as she was. Also possibly using that as an excuse to drape herself over him, but she was probably just really unstable right now. Definitely.

Byleth, thankfully, was remaining mostly unaffected.

“While such attention is flattering and she is an attractive young woman,” she began, and Jeralt tried very hard not to freeze on the spot, “I hardly think such a thing would be very appropriate if I am to be a teacher, and I am currently not looking for a romantic partner. Nor would it be very professional for this to be the sole factor in my decision.”

The Goddess was real, and she watched over him. He was just going to ignore the slight contraction of her cheeks that would have been a blush on anyone else.

“Shame that. Well, good luck choosing. It’ll be entertaining, either way !”

“Do not listen to this imbecile, Byleth,” Lucina added. “He merely revels in chaos and confusion. You would be fine leader for any of the houses, on your own merits. They shall be lucky to have you.”

“Thank you. You have given me much to think about. I believe I will head back to the Monastery and think on it some more.”

Well, he’d had enough bullshit for this fucking day. Time to go with her.

“I’ll go and hit the sack too. Rhea’s expecting me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow, because of course she is. See you lot around, I suppose.”

“Sure thing, rest up you two. Have to admit I’m curious what the hell tomorrow will be like, but I’ll be looking forward to it. Sleep well,” Robin said, saluting them with his mug, echoed by a polite Lucina and visibly disappointed Anna.

He made it out with Byleth, and walked a couple of steps away before allowing himself a smug smile. Another bar tab, avoided !

They walked in silence, for a while, revelling in a little normality after one hell of a weird day.

Eventually, it was Byleth who broke the silence, and though she seemed unmoved, to Jeralt’s trained eye, her curiosity was almost palpable.

“Father, why is it you trust no one at Garreg Mach ? It was most obvious with the Archbishop, but even Robin and Lucina now make you tense, and I do not remember us having any tensions with Robin and Lucina before. Even that red-haired woman. Who was she, by the way ?”

He pondered what to tell her. Best to start with the easiest.

“Well, that last one’s simple : she’s a merchant called Anna, who is a bit too sneaky and greedy both for her own good and also hasn’t seemed to age at all in the fifteen years since I saw her last.”

“Yes, I suppose you would notice. You did seem overly familiar with her body,” and he choked at the jab from his daughter. Whoever thought she didn’t have a sense of humour just couldn’t detect it, but his girl was _vicious_ when she wanted to be.

“Dammit, By, it’s not like that, I swear I’ve only met her a handful of times and certainly not for anything like that. Only reason I even remember her was because in some circles she’s also known as someone who can smuggle people in and out of Fódlan all quiet-like. She’s the reason the other two are here in the first place, they’re working so they can afford her rates, though apparently they’re old acquaintances or something ? She’s the one who got Gregor out of the country, and apparently he married her sister after working a job for Robin in his and Lucina’s home country.”

He considered his next words carefully.

“Speaking of these two… they’re alright enough sorts, I reckon, but there’s something about Robin that makes me uneasy, and I feel like Lucina’ll follow his lead if push comes to shove. He’s a bit curious for his own good, and he definitely picked up on something we all missed this morning that’s made him interested in _you_. I feel like we’re all a big game to him, and I don’t care for it much.”

And he ignored the little voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Rhea telling him _I told you so._ Curse her for acting all reasonable after all this time.

“Think I should fear for my virtue ? The Imperial princess is not the only one with a proven interest in blue-haired swordswomen, after all,” Byleth offered in a tone that anyone else would have taken seriously.

"Hah,” he snorted. “Don’t quite think he’s the type. Nah, I don’t know what it is, but he even has Rhea on edge, and I didn’t even _know_ anyone could make her nervous.”

Byleth’s silence spoke for itself.

“Yeah, Rhea’s… Look, there’s some history there, and I’ll tell you about it someday, just… not tonight. But By…” he articulated slowly, stalling to find the appropriate words. “Be careful around her, yeah ? It might be she genuinely wants what’s best for you, but… I can’t trust her word for it, so don’t let your guard down. Gut says she’s up to something, and it’s usually not too wrong on these things.”

“When it’s sober at least,” his daughter riposted, but a serious look at his eyes and a quick nod told him she’d taken his warning with the necessary seriousness.

They didn’t talk for the rest of the way, but as they were about to part ways, he authorised himself a solid hug.

Curse the alcohol for making him emotional, and this place for stirring up buried memories.

“Sleep well, By.”

“You too, Father.”

They didn’t need to say anything else, so he just drunkenly made his way to his room (still the same one — thank the Goddess they’d at least cleaned it since) and collapsed on the mattress, too conked out to try to do anything else of his night.

In his drunken haze, he could almost feel Sitri settling down next to him for warmth.

* * *

Back in their room, Lucina stared Robin down, still entirely alert, unlike her lover who had been far too liberal with his drinking, egged on by a dejected Anna.

“Robin.”

He tried to act innocent, but she could already see through it when he was sober, let alone in his current state.

“Robin. What did you tell Edelgard when you talked, why did her being victim of an assassination attempt make you look so happy, and how much trouble are we hypothetically in ?”

He tried to keep up the guileless act,but she had him. He couldn’t resist gloating about the trouble he could cause.

“Well, hypothetically, I could have taught her about false flag operations with regards to the use of visible known associates, and used political assassination as an example, so I imagine in that situation I would find Byleth’s claim that Edelgard was the target of an assassination... suspect, and be happy she took to my lessons so quickly,” he chanced, and she almost strangled him on the spot.

“You _what ?_ ”

“Well Hubert was so pitiful when he tried to intimidate us, I just had to give him some tips you know ? And I mean sure that girl is trying the whole ruthless emperor thing, but she’s about as menacing as a wet kitten ! I just felt bad for her, so I gave her a couple of pointers, is all. Besides, she picked up on it so quickly, I’m so proud !”

He paused.

“Hypothetically. I would hypothetically be proud, if I’d actually done any of that.”

Another pause.

“Which I couldn’t have, because this all hypothetical.”

More silence.

“Just so we’re clear.”

And still, silence.

“You’re sleeping on the floor tonight,” was all she found the strength to say.

“Noooo !”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there's a lot of character drama here, and notably between Jeralt and Rhea, whose dynamic I find incredibly interesting but I'm not quite sure I've nailed it - they're pretty contradictory characters at times, and the game gives us so little to work with beyond the basics. Hope I didn't mangle it too much.
> 
> I think y'all can probably tell I wrote the tavern scene to unwind after that - that one was a blast, and let me bring Anna back in the story, which I really enjoy doing. I know Gregor/Anna is not an Awakening support, but I saw it in a fic once (think it was Shattered Reflections) and I love the idea, so I kept it, not to mention it was a fun little narrative with Gregor actually being from Brigid and having worked on jobs with Jeralt. I wouldn't say there's much of a point to all that, but it tied all these characters up nicely and also I just liked the idea that they all had these different threads already connecting them all without knowing it.
> 
> Also, establishing Gregor/Anna lets me imagine the Annas have a thing for grizzled mercenary types and therefore have the local one clumsily flirting with a deeply uncomfortable Jeralt. Don't ask me why it was funny in my head, but it really was.
> 
> I know I promised some Claude in a comment, but the chapter got to 7k and I figured that was long enough, so that's coming up next chapter !


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, at over 12k, this one's the biggest one yet, and I honestly do not know how it got that long or why I allowed it to happen but I just couldn't find a good stopping point. In other news, well, if you are among those who wanted some Claude, have, like, about nine thousand and some words of Claude POV ? I think that makes him the character with the single most POV in word count since the beginning of the fic.
> 
> Word of warning, I've written about half of this on the train and the rest late at night/early morning because I've been pretty busy, and I've honestly just not got the heart nor the time to give it the several long, thorough re-reads it needs after working on it for so long and rewriting chunks of several thousand words over and over again, so this one likely has quite a few typos, especially in the second half. Apologies for that, but honestly I am just sort of done with this chapter.
> 
> Also, this is the infodump chapter. I'm so sorry. At least I tried to make it entertaining ? Just keep in mind that headcanons are coming up, and before I get lambasted for some obscure lore detail, do keep in mind that Robin is not omniscient nor all-knowing and has gotten and will get some things wrong - not to mention he is seen here through somebody else's viewpoint. Just keep that in mind going in.
> 
> Oh also Byleth gets a House or something.

When Rhea asked her if she’d made her choice, Byleth figured that was far too absolute a way of describing what was in essence going off of a fairly minute intuition. In truth, she’d gone to bed still wondering, and woken up the same, but a quick meeting with all the house leaders who’d just _chanced_ to be on her path to the Archbishop’s office this morning had given her the clue she needed.

Then, she’d made sure not to tell her father.

“The Black Eagles.”

Watching him choke on air and hack a violent cough, looking at her as though utterly betrayed and bewildered was completely worth it.

If nobody else could tell her amusement, he sure could.

* * *

Whatever might have transpired in Rhea’s office that morning was beyond Edelgard, but she was still fairly sure their teacher was late — unsurprising, really, considering the last minute nature of each class’s assignment. Which, much as she might have liked otherwise, could mostly be described as her fault, in her efforts to get Jeritza to attain the position, meaning she could not even blame Rhea for it.

And she hadn’t even managed that part, meaning this was all pointless.

She wasn’t usually the kind of individual to find themselves so irritable over minor details, but the last week had been far too trying, and days of frantic worrying on top of an already poor sleep schedule had not been beneficial to her mood. Even the short camping trip during which they were all supposed to assess the latest potential House head, professor Wulfric’s capacities (which he’d failed egregiously — who needed to hire bandits to wound a target and discredit them when said target just ran away ?), while a blessed couple of days outside the monastery, had not exactly been what one might call relaxing.

At least the way back had been pleasant. Even though her hastily modified plan had gone mostly without a hitch, it had been far too nerve-wracking, and by the end more than a little off the rails.

It had started when her and Hubert, fresh out of professor Robin’s office, had sat down and realised he’d all but implied he was aware of their intention to attempt to assassinate the other two leaders during the trip, and not only laughed at them and called it amateurish, but then proceeded to give them _tips_.

And infuriating as it had been, the advice was sound. The original plan was a loss anyway — if Robin was aware, there was no telling who else was —, so the two of them came up with the idea to slightly modify it. Instead, Kostas would have to target her specifically, and make it believable. After all, she was not without enemies, and if they happened to kill one of her companions on the way, well, it would be a tragic sacrifice she would never forget from one who was indeed the truest of friends. And perhaps she might discretely direct their grieving vassals and relatives towards a faction hiding in the dark, who might have been behind it…

It started off well. The ambush, the demand to hand her over, predictably refused by all those very chivalric people she found herself surrounded by, the beginning of the fight, where she was clearly the capture target for all to see… And then professor Wulfric turned and ran. Ran through the enemy, to his credit, distracting them and drawing a good portion of their riders, who sought to prevent him from getting help, but he ran and left them without cover.

This left Claude open, and Claude did what any weaselly bowman does when melee fighters close down on them : he ran too, towards cover this time. This left her and Dimitri open and almost surrounded, and that was when she began to notice the greedy glint in Kostas’ eye further ahead, and the fact that those bandits were really not pulling their punches.

So they both turned and ran off after Claude, unnoticed by the Knights of Seiros, until finally they made it to Remire, and met Jeralt Eisner and his daughter, and finally fought off the bandits.

Which reminded her that she needed to have Hubert track down Kostas. He was too big a loose end to ignore.

But to return to the way back, Byleth had been an… interesting encounter. Not only did she quite possibly owe her her life, as Kostas had not looked as though he were puling that particular blow, but she was extremely skilled and more surprisingly entirely unaligned, with anyone. No country, no church, no noble, only her father. And while Edelgard would normally be more than dubious regarding such claims, Byleth’s blank-faced indifference combined with her staggering ignorance of some Fódlan’s most basic political realities implied that she was simply too removed to care.

She was also apparently the third House head, hired by Rhea on the spot without any kind of examination in a move that had utterly blindsided her, Jeralt, Byleth herself and even her own advisor, as Seteth was heard grumbling well into the night by any who were still up, and had seemingly picked up straight from where he left off this morning.

At the very least, judging by the newly reinstated Captain of the Knights of Seiros’s mood, neither him nor Byleth were involved in the Archbishop’s plans yet. More worryingly, however, the two were according to Claude acquainted with the _other_ two new professors, and were seen having a drink with them yesterday evening, which was a whole new slew of headaches as far as she was concerned.

But as the three of them had successively shown Byleth around and introduced her to their classmates, she’d mostly seen a serious woman getting down to tackle her work in earnest. This, and the fact that her allegiances, while dubious, were at least up for debate, which frankly made her wish she would choose the Eagles. She also had more experience in the conduct of war than the other two options, despite being likely lacking compared to them in other areas, a subject which quite obviously was rather relevant to her.

She also was, from what little she’d seen, the most skilled fighter she’d seen besides Jeritza and professor Lucina, and while the latter was at least fit to teach, she was also inherently untrustworthy. So Byleth could prove a potential boon to have by her side, but more realistically would at the very least be a good instructor to help her advance on her own combat skills.

Despite what Hubert might imply, these were legitimately the only reasons.

Edelgard, however, did not have Claude’s easy charm, or the Lions’ close-knit camaraderie. It had not been said but heavily implied that Byleth had gotten her pick of the classes, and were Edelgard given the same choice, she could not imagine choosing her own Eagles. Some were a mess individually (like Bernadetta or Linhardt), some were a mess collectively (like herself and Ferdinand, or Bernadetta and anyone, or Hubert and… anyone too, really), the Empire was openly engaged in political in-fighting without even getting into its more shadowy problems…

For an unattached mercenary, it was most definitely the single worst choice.

And so, with all this in mind, it was with considerable relief and surprise both that that she saw the door to their classroom finally open, cutting Caspar mid-chatter, to let in a familiar blue-haired figure.

Everyone instantly quieted down at her entry, and her purposeful walk to the front of the class was eerily reminiscent of professor Lucina’s from the now infamous introductory group sessions (one they had at least not failed as abysmally as the Lions, despite their middling performance and brutal dispatch).

“Greetings, class. I am Byleth Eisner, and I will be your teacher for the year. I understand that I have no experience teaching, and so I hope you will forgive any of my inadequacies. I shall do my best to accomplish my task to the best of my abilities, but please do not hesitate to come to me if you ever find my teaching insufficient,” she monotonously declared, impassive as ever.

Well, that was perhaps not the most exciting way to start the year, but Edelgard chose to see her openness as a net positive.

“While I have more or less met all of you already, I am apparently expected to immediately lead you in battle in a few days, so perhaps a more formal introduction is in order ? Please state your skills in battle, and what you hope to achieve from your education here. Starting with you, Edelgard,” she nodded at her, and everyone politely ignored Bernadetta’s distressed whine.

As they ran through formalities, Edelgard could not help but wonder if this was to set the tone for the rest of the year. Detached pragmatism… while not something she particularly excelled in or desired, it was definitely preferable to the sycophantic scheming of her court, and the lackadaisical insouciance that she thought characterised Manuela and Hanneman.

She could get used to this, for now at least.

* * *

Class had been surprisingly productive. Professor Byleth, while at times clearly improvising from the material she’d been given, had proven a surprisingly good teacher, capable of commanding attention from the class and quelling the rowdier students, and clearly communicating the material. Truly, she had been pleasantly surprised by how earnest and serious her new teacher had shown herself to be, which was why she disliked having to do this.

“Excuse me, my teacher, but could I speak with you for a moment ?” she asked as the rest of the class filed out — or pretended to, in Hubert’s case.

“Of course, Edelgard,” was the simple answer, as Byleth sat back down behind the desk she’d been vacating. “Is something the matter ?”

“Nothing of the sort,” she was quick to assure. “I was merely hoping that you might explain what made you choose the Eagles. We are…” she began, pausing and drawing out the word both to avoid having to find an appropriate descriptor and to play up the confused and slightly distrusting young girl. 

She might have held considerable distaste for such methods, but for now they served her purpose. She just needed to grow strong enough that she would not need to resort to them.

“You wish to know why I did not pick the Lions or the Deer, when they would have been the easiest picks for someone like me ?” asked Byleth, still not betraying the slightest emotion.

And yet she somehow felt open and welcoming. It was the damnedest thing.

“Yes, if you would…” she trailed off, and this time her embarrassment was only partly faked.

“The reason is simple. Yesterday, after meeting all the students, I was still undecided, so I decided to seek the counsel of two acquaintances of mine who are already teachers here.”

“Professor Robin and professor Lucina ?” she asked, desperately hoping for a negative.

“Indeed. Whatever his other flaws may be, Robin is a shrewd judge of character. He broke down what I might expect from each of the houses, and gave me details I might not have picked up. And then, he recommended I pick your house.”

Edelgard felt her blood freeze in her veins. Was she never going to be free of his spectre while here ? Was her new teacher compromised ?

“And is that why you picked us ? Because he advised you to do so ?”

She heard her voice grow a little bit colder, a little more guarded, and cursed her inability to maintain that particular persona.

Luckily, Byleth only seemed, impossibly, a little amused.

“And does that disappoint you ? I am a mercenary. I went to a respected professional for advice, and received it,” she pointed out, and no matter how sensible her words, they still did not quell the little pang of betrayal and the greater tide of frustration that submerged her. “However, you’ll be pleased to know, then, that I did not take his recommendation into account.”

That froze her in her tracks.

“What do you mean, Professor ?”

“While his breakdown of the houses was sufficient for my purposes, the reasons behind his recommendation were entirely frivolous, so I dismissed them. Instead, I thought upon his earlier words when I met you all again this morning as you just _happened_ to all find your way to me before my meeting with the Archbishop,” she explained, and she now knew she wasn’t imagining the tiny amused glint in her professor’s eye.

She marked a pause, and Edelgard decided not to break the silence.

“Dimitri,” she began, “is governed first and foremost by duty. Duty, I know and understand already. Claude, for all his airs, is a man with a dream, one he holds close to his chest, and dreams are strange things to me. I do not have such aspirations, and do not understand them beyond the most cursory of academic understandings. You, however, have a purpose. I do not know what it is, but I’d imagine it is one you share with that retainer of yours. And I feel that, even if they are not necessarily similar or even compatible, purpose is something this class has plenty of.”

There was another silence, but this time Edelgard’s lack of words was not intentional in the slightest ; she was merely hung to her teacher’s words, whose earlier laconic delivery was now considerably less fluid, though not any less assured. She merely took her time to put exact words onto what she wished to articulate.

“Purpose is not something I know either. But it is something I can… understand, at least. The concept exists somewhere at the edge of my mind. I am hoping that… teaching your class for the year will help me find my own. That is all.”

That was… surprisingly more earnest and honest than she’d been expecting. But then again, was that not an apt summary of her entire acquaintanceship with the professor ?

“I see,” was all she chose to answer, before a small smile that she was surprised to realise she genuinely meant broke onto her face. “Then I hope you will find what you seek amongst us, my teacher.”

Her answer seemed to please Byleth, as much as she could tell anyway from her probably-grateful nod, so after returning it and wishing her a good day, she turned her heels and headed towards the door.

That was when an unresolved detail suddenly jumped at her.

“Professor ?” she called back, already halfway out the door.

“Yes ?” answered Byleth, who was already done gathering her papers and was heading to the room’s exit too.

“If I may ask, what exactly was professor Robin’s reason for recommending us ? Grating as he may be, he is usually of sound advice, I am told.”

“That he is, except on one matter. You see, he was hoping that by throwing you at the other blue-haired swordswoman, you would stop lusting after his own lover,” she declared, as though what she was saying was completely reasonable and appropriate.

“I— No— That is, I do not !…” was all her miserable sputtering could manage.

“Do not worry, I am not one to judge. Besides, she is a very attractive woman, it is entirely understandable. I cannot fault your taste,” she added, giving her what might very well have been an approving nod and just— _leaving_.

Leaving her there, still dumbstruck and furiously flushing, unable to mount a rebuttal from sheer shock.

She could not believe she’d thought the mysterious professor emotionless — she’d clearly been enjoying this !

She was still silently opening and closing her mouth when Hubert faded back from the shadow of a pillar.

“Lady Edelgard,” was all he said, letting her get her bearing back.

“… Hubert, there’s two of them. Goddess help us, there’s two of them.”

“Are you referring to professor Robin or professor Lucina, your Majesty ? One might take your sentence to have a very different meaning should you mean the latter,” was all he could find fit to answer her.

“ _Not you too_ !”

* * *

Claude had been a bit disappointed when the new teacher had chosen the Eagles, but he’d gotten over it fairly quickly. Manuela was a blast, and even if she perhaps lacked the sterner hand necessary to keep their rowdy lot under control, well… that meant she couldn’t keep _him_ under control, so silver linings.

Either way, even without being the recipients of Byleth’s lectures, they were most likely about to experiment a completely different style of teaching from Manuela’s anyway, because the fact this was the week’s beginning meant they were finally about to get to witness professor Robin’s teaching.

Shady and nosy as the traveler was, Claude would be lying if he said he wasn’t looking forward to this. Dubious as his intentions were, the man was incredibly entertaining, and an excellent table companion to boot.

He barely even had to keep a watch on his glass, because Robin just felt like the type of man who’d find poisoning him simply too _boring_.

So here they were, all sat in a room that had been haphazardly decorated with crude hand-drawn posters obviously made in a rush, depicting maps of places he’d never heard of, unknown religious symbols and flags and standards whose provenance he could not begin to fathom. Everything was heavily annotated, sometimes in languages and even scripts none of them could recognise. Their surroundings had only increased the excitement reverberating across the students.

And to him, personally, this place truly made Garreg Mach feel like a cathedral, because this was a slice of heaven right in front of him. Fragments of a world vaster than he’d ever dreamt it, laid bare before him, what must have been dozens of cultures throughout the world coexisting. It was a taste of a possibility, a sliver of truth fed into what had so far been an impossible dream.

He resolved to find a key to this place as soon as possible.

Their usual hubbub was however suddenly interrupted, and it immediately became apparent that whatever Robin and his lover may have in common, teaching styles were not part of it.

“Greetings, young impressionable minds !” yelled Robin as he violently kicked the door open and all but floated to his desk, skipping merrily to the front of the class and executing a perilous-looking heel turn to face them that mostly looked as though he was about trip and fall.

“You already know who I am, I know who at least half of you are, and the others probably don’t matter so let’s not waste any more time and let’s get to it ! Welcome to Introductory World History, Geography and Politics !” he happily exclaimed, beaming at them, amidst their laughter.

His next question froze them all in shock.

‘Now who’s up for a little heresy ?”

Someone made a little strangled, horrified sound at the back — he assumed that was Marianne, then, but no one else dared speak. Was this a test ? Was he serious ? What were they supposed to do ?

Before Claude’s brain could go running off on forming contingency schemes, however, Robin thankfully contributed the answer.

“Yeah, that’s about what I expected, which means I’ll need the disclaimer. Listen up, kids !” he commanded their attention back. “I hardly need to tell you all, sitting as we are in the Church of Seiros’s stronghold, that religion is important to many. There are many who are devout, and many who share in that devotion with others. Some of these men and women become kings, rulers, bishops, thinkers, mayors, may become anything that allows them to exert influence, and that is the sum total of what politics is : the exertion of influence to shape society. For example, even if you are a Fódlani noble but do not hold faith in the Goddess, you will still have to take into account that many of your people are faithful, that the Church of Seiros wields considerable influence, that many of your rivals and your allies both will most likely view them in a good light… It does not matter that you do not believe, because all those around you do.

“In this situation, I want you during these lessons to be that hypothetical noble. Religion, particularly the Cult of Naga and more widely worship of the Divine Dragons, is an intrinsic part of our wider world’s history and I cannot discuss its past or present politics without giving it a mention. I will not ask you to believe in them, I will not pretend to tell you which is correct or not, but if we refuse to acknowledge their existence, we cannot understand the world. So in here, and just in this here classroom, it is within my remit to tell you of other religious practices insofar as they would affect you should you venture out in the world. If you do not believe you can deal with this, I will not judge you, but I must warn you that you will find the contents of my lectures difficult to palate at times. Is this going to a problem for any of you ?”

As one, everyone turned to Marianne, who after steadying herself gave the tiniest “no” she could while trying to disappear inside her own shoulders.

“Great ! We’re good then ! Now, I’m going to guess you’re all at least somewhat eager to start learning about all the places to see in the world, but there’s another couple of things we should sort out before hand. First, in keeping with the first point : the term ‘god’ or ‘goddess’ here will be used to designate entities which are widely worshipped, often because they are possessed of power beyond the merely mortal. That is the only criteria ; do not let the fact that some of these beings therefore have real, tangible physical forms lure you into thinking they have any more of a valid claim to godhood than a non-physical equivalent, such as your own goddess.”

As the class either nodded at the reassurance in the validity of their faith or gasped at the casual mention of real beings powerful enough they could be and were mistaken for gods, Claude wondered if he was the only one who caught the underlying assertion : that all those beings, including Fódlan’s own Sothis, _claimed_ godhood, rather than demonstrated it.

“The second, is a quick history of the origin of the world itself. Now, this story is old, very old, and even the oldest being we know that we can factually age, the Divine Dragon Naga, was not born at its very beginning. And considering there’s records of Naga being around for at least six to seven thousand years, and that she was already an adult dragon in them, that’s telling you something,” he casually dropped, as though it didn’t matter that there were people out there older than Fódlan’s _entire recorded history_ by several millenia.

What the hell.

“So my point here is that while you are lucky in that I am one of the few historians in the world that has actually managed to fact-check most of his knowledge, for this one story I must stick to the stories we have inherited of the beginning, from the dragons and from the people of Tellius both.”

There it was again, a casual mention of dragons, as though they were a thing of ordinary life (and he’d not missed that “fact-checked his knowledge” line — had Robin _met_ some ?) and not creatures straight out of myth.

“I’ll skip the names because historical linguistic drift has created too many variants, but everyone agrees on a few details : there was a creator Goddess, who descended on a world full of water. For some reason — most accounts say she was lonely, but for all we know it was for shits and giggles — she created land, meaning the continents, and the people on them. Now, I haven’t heard anything about them since coming here, so I suppose it’s too much to hope some of you have heard of the Laguz tribes ?” he chanced.

He was met by confused silence, as Claude wondered what the hell those were supposed to be.

“Transforming animal people, no one ?”

Claude felt his thoughts freeze into a halt.

_What._

“I’m gonna take that as a no. Well, I gave you the pitch, really. That Goddess created this one race called the Zunanma. By most accounts, the Zunanma were basically animal people, not transforming though,” he glibly added as though they were following him. “Now eventually, the Zunanma split into on one side the Laguz, and on the other the Beorc. Long story short, the Laguz are the transforming animal people, and the Beorc are us — that is, humans. All of them, literally. There’s very interesting contradicting lores on how that came to be, and I’ll delve more into them another time if you want, but for now you just need to know that eventually the Laguz and the Beorc went to war with each other because they were different, pretty much. Most sources we have agree that the Beorc started it, but then pretty much all these sources are Laguz so take that with a pinch of salt.

“Now the Goddess, who had intervened several times already to try and get them to all get along, decided to wipe her hands off of all this and in a fit of rage flooded the entire world. Luckily, she managed to realise it was a bit of an overreaction at the last moment, and one continent survived the purge, the one we now know as Tellius. So next time you’re being racist, kids, remember that one time that by being racist we disappointed the _creator of the world_ so hard she decided to destroy the entire planet rather than let us live !” he added with a bright smile.

Claude was very confused about how to feel here. On one hand, that was definitely the sort of message he could get behind, even though he wasn’t quite sure he was going to get Holst Goneril and his father to hug each other saying ‘we’re all Beorcs in the end’, but he was fairly sure he was being overloaded with information right now and why had none of them ever been told that the _world nearly ended once_?

“Well, going by the silence, you’re all dead or captivated, and I’ve seen many dead people so I’m going to go with the latter. Anyhow, after that the Goddess is terrified of what she’s done, so to prevent a repeat she decides to separate herself into two goddesses, with one containing her emotions and the other her rational thoughts. Unsurprisingly, the rational one decides the emotional one is a threat and decides to kill her, but this one Laguz guy convinces her to simply seal her away in an item called the Fire Emblem. Keep that name in mind, it’s going to come up later. Also in quite a lot of these lessons, if I’m honest. You’re gonna hear about it, believe me, Naga knows I’m sick of it by now.”

Cladue could feel the palpable doubt radiating from the class at this. They didn’t think they’d be able to remember a minute detail from this veritable flow of information.

From what little he knew of Robin, they were wrong. He had a feeling that if that man believed something was important, it most likely was.

“Anyway, long story short, the Laguz and the Beorc had been fighting the entire time. Now that the goddess had literally sealed all her kindness and compassion away, amongst other things, however, the Laguz guy who managed to convince her of the whole seal idea was scared that she’d just consider them all wasted effort and erase them all to start anew. So to prove everyone could coexist peacefully, he married this one human hero, and all the tribes struck peace, so that they could go to the goddess and show her just how peaceful they all were. The goddess was sort-of convinced, but not completely, so she told them she would be back in a thousand years, and if they were still at peace then, she’d consider it all a success. Otherwise she’d destroy the world.

“Unfortunately, the knowledge of that particular tidbit got lost, so I’m skipping over a lot of history here but basically when the thousand years were over no one knew they were supposed to act natural and instead the entire continent was having a massive war. Thankfully, someone figured out what to do and released the emotion goddess from the Fire Emblem, and together with her managed to prevent the logic goddess from destroying the world. The two halves of the goddess reformed into the original, and she decided that was proof of cooperation enough, so she resurfaced all the drowned lands in the world and retired from current affairs, so to say. Side note, the dude who stopped her was a guy called the Radiant Hero, and remember his name because he’s going to crop up again. Like, guy gets around, honestly, you wouldn’t believe. And technically it wasn’t just him, but he’s the only one people other than scholars really remember outside of Tellius. Any questions ?”

Yet again, he was met with complete silence. It wasn’t for a lack of questions, at least on Claude’s part. He had _so many_ of these. But where could he even start ?

In the end, it was (perhaps unsurprisingly) Lysithea who raised the most important one.

“Professor, you mentioned at the beginning that we could not be sure of this story’s accuracy. Just how much of this has even been proven ?” she asked, a challenging tone to her words. Well, she never did like feeling ignorant.

“A good question, glad someone is exercising their critical thinking here !” he happily responded. “Everything prior to the splitting of the Goddess, and even moreso before the separation of the Laguz and the Beorc, is pretty much oral tradition, and partly reconstructed, so while the bare bones of it are generally accepted as a rough guideline to events, there are no factual records and most definitely anything you find beyond what I’ve told you here is definitely embellishment. As for after that, accuracy waxes and wanes depending on the period, but we have solid primary and secondary sources for a fair amount of the thousand year gap between the splitting and the merging of the goddess and a ridiculous amount of it for the lead-up to the merging and the immediate aftermath of the merging. Also, we’ve found plenty of evidence that the earliest traces of civilisation anywhere in the world can be found on Tellius and predate anything else by a decent amount, and that’s on top of what we know from Naga herself, who was actually around for that part, and the archives of the dragon tribes, who while not quite as long-lived still have lifespans that can beggar belief,” happily confirming then that dragons were indeed a thing and they had _tribes_ and apparently kept _archives_.

Because honestly why not at this point.

“So all in all, I went a bit quick but you can consider most of what I said fact-checked. I’d direct you to the appropriate sources, but I’ve unfortunately not found any appropriately-stocked libraries around here as far as the matter is concerned. There’s also considerable linguistic evidence that most of the world’s main languages come from a similar root to Tellius’ lingua franca, and I can trace some of it in modern Fódlani. If you’re particularly curious, however, I do have a compendium of Begnion Era Tellius history, which includes part of the time period I mentioned, and a handful of my own journals documenting my findings, though I’m afraid I’m currently busy updating those so they’ll have to wait.”

“So we’re supposed to simply take you at your word for this ? Also, weren’t you saying how you weren’t dismissing any religion earlier ?” was a dubious Leonie’s interjection. 

She appeared the least shaken out of all of them, presumably because she likely was the one who cared the least. She was always more focused on practical concerns

“Well, yes, I suppose you are. Do rest assured, however, that I was _thoroughly_ questioned by the Archbishop prior to this and therefore have her backing in this, however,” he fibbed, because Claude knew when someone was trying to feed him rattlesnakes. That was probably partly true, but something told him she did not agree to _all_ of that.

Not that he minded in the slightest.

“Still, to answer your other question, it is simply because of two reasons I am, in fact, not dismissing your faith, as you say. The first is that we have many names recorded for the original Goddess, and while variants of some kind of “Ashunera” are the most common, it’s already known that when she split her two halves they used different names. Therefore your Sothis could perfectly be that Goddess under a different name, it could be that she fragmented herself again ; hell, thanks to your relative isolation and the Veil, it could well be that you also never sank in the first place, unlike the rest of the world. And second, while Ashunera is the only recorded bonafide, genuine Goddess that we can verify in history, never was it said anywhere that she must be the only one. She had to come from somewhere, after all. Might be that yours came from the same place, or a different on altogether. Might also be she’s just a very powerful being claiming godhood, but what do I know ?” he ended with that little self-deprecating smile that Claude was finally beginning to pick up on.

It was the sign he was diverting attention away from something. But what could he be attempting to bury with those last sentences ?…

It hit him suddenly. Those last couples of sentences had prevented them from noticing he had a very clear idea.

“But you think she’s connected to that story somehow, don’t you Prof ? You don’t think she’s something else altogether.” he challenged, forcing himself to look uncaringly whimsical. He really shouldn’t let the other man know how interested he was in the subject.

“Got it in one, Claude ! But now, seeing as you’ve guessed that much, can you tell me why that is ?” Robin answered, grinning unashamedly like a shark, daring him to show the rest of their audience just how shrewd he could be.

He would have to wait, however, because Claude didn’t have that answer anyway.

“Hell if I know, Prof, you just sounded mightily certain, so I figured I’d take a chance !”

“Oh, really ? That’s too bad, Claude,” he smiled contritely, amusement dancing in his eyes. Goddess, but why did talking to him have to be even more draining than a normal conversation already was ? “Anyone else ? I did give you all the key, you know. Even highlighted it for you.”

Raphael looked lost, Hilda like she was just waiting for someone else to find the answer already. Lorenz had looked faintly outraged since about twenty seconds into the lecture, but had not yet dared open his mouth, and Claude supposed he should be thankful for small mercies. Leonie and Lysithea both looked like they were racking their brains rather hard to work that one out, and Marianne looked unsure about whether or not she should be involved in this discussion.

And yet, of all of them, it was Ignatz who raised his voice.

“Is it… Because of that Fire Emblem you mentioned ?”

“Correct ! And why is that relevant ?”

At that, Ignatz wilted, looking slightly guilty, as though he should have known. Which was silly, because they were frankly all quite lost.

“I… Don’t know, you simply said that it was important we remember it and then it never came up… Professor, why is this Fire Emblem important ?”

“Well, good enough,” their teacher sighed. “I suppose I’ll fill in the rest. Besides, I guess it wouldn’t be as glaringly obvious for you people. See, as I mentioned before, the Fire Emblem was the seal in which one half of that goddess was sealed away, and when she was unsealed, so was the item destroyed. Or so we assume — at the very least, it lost its powers, since it was never heard of again. But the name remains strongly associated with items capable of granting divine power, or associated with the sealing of powerful beings or objects. For example, in my home continent of Ylisse, it is the name given to a shield which was used to seal away the Earth Dragon Medeus, and later the Dark Dragon Grima. In Elibe, it refers to the imperial seal of the country of Bern, where it was also used to seal a dragon, the Demon Dragon Idunn. In Magvel, it was the name of the Sacred Stone of Grado, used to seal away the Demon King Fomortiis.

“If you’re noticing a pattern here, that’s pretty normal and keep it in mind for later lessons. We humans have a long history of sealing away things we can’t kill in pretty objects and honestly historically speaking it’s usually not worked out great for us. Anyway, there’s a few more lesser examples around, but these are the ones most people will bring up. My point is, the Fire Emblem has a name which carries very strong meaning and historical weight and speaks of our shared past and common ancestry. The fact it can be found almost everywhere in some variant, especially when sometimes used to designate objects for which it seems an entirely arbitrary name, is a sign that most of the world’s dominant cultures have inherited some degree of Tellian worship traditions, which funnily enough also includes unconditionally trusting blue-haired people — something that comes from the stories of the Radiant Hero,” and his voice began to take that dreaded tone which creeped into it whenever his mind had gone completely off the rails. Hardly the moment, considering how lost they all were. “You would not believe how many of the world’s ruling families have blue hair. And honestly just how much correlation many of our cultures place between hair colours and certain characteristics. For example, pink… no, purple…well, light blue — wait, no, there is nothing I can say here that won’t probably offend one of you lot, and I haven’t even gotten into white or green hair yet, so ask me another time if you’re curious ! But I’m digressing — are you beginning to see my point ?”

Well, Claude could see a point alright, after shaking himself out of that tangent on hair colour (he was definitely marking down that tidbit about white hair — chancing a quick glance at Lysithea, she looked only slightly peeved, but there was a tenseness to her frame that hadn’t been there before) and focusing his thoughts, but still not the link. Clearly, he had noted something important enough within Fódlani culture that could be linked back to this Fire Emblem, but there was nothing he knew of with that name, and this was a subject he’d researched in depth. Relics aside, more than artefacts the only things associated with divine power were… Crests…

“Anyway, I think that’s quite enough information for today, so I’ll leave you to meditate on that ! Wouldn’t want to overwhelm you lot or anything ! Once again, if you have further questions, feel free to seek me out at my office and I guess maybe I’ll listen to you if I can be bothered. I have a merchant to go laugh at because she can’t hold her liquor and Seteth is waiting at the door,” he jauntily announced, giving Claude a wink and a knowing smile, before picking up his papers.

He threw everything into a bag, gave them a happy little wave and sauntered off to the window, climbing out of it as naturally as could be before throwing himself out.

A faint cry of pain and the sound of someone fumbling their landing reached them, before silence finally settled amongst the still-dumbstruck students.

“… He’s really just going to leave like that, huh ?” commented Leonie, sounding more composed than most of them, if slightly nonplussed.

“After all this, he is going to leave without telling us the answer ? I cannot believe the nerve that man !” huffed an outraged Lysithea. “And I don’t suppose any of you know what he meant ?” she added, looking hopefully at Ignatz and him in particular.

“Afraid not, little Lys,” he smiled contritely, too unsure about whether to admit what he knew. Being a bit off-kilter still, it wasn’t his finest lie, but the reference to her height was enough to draw away her attention.

“Ergh ! I do not know why I hoped for better, considering how well the two of you get along, but after Professor Lucina I had hoped for at least some basic competency !” she continued to rant, but he tuned her out.

He had to disagree there. He’d imparted his lesson perfectly competently — just enough information that they struggled to keep up, but not enough that those who could follow him ever got lost. Enough theatricality to be memorable and give the information individuality, but not enough to take over from the content of his words. And, crucially, enough harmlessness projected to detract from just how subversive the material could potentially be. Sure, nothing he said outright contradicted the Fódlani understanding of the world.

But really, how much had he kept back ?

From the corner of his eye, he caught a glance a Lorenz and Hilda both. The former was busy being outraged at an uncaring Raphael about their teacher’s boorishness. The latter, however, was eyeing him curiously, with a sly little smile.

Shit, she’d caught him. Not for the first time, he cursed the laid-back Goneril girl. She was good company, and a great wit on top, but she was also far too observant behind her comely, air-headed airs. Which wouldn’t be a problem if he could trust her, but… Fond as he was of spending time with her and as easily as their friendship had come, she was a Goneril, and he was what he was, and these things couldn’t just be forgotten.

Nonetheless, it seems they were yet again on the same wavelength. For once, he rued this fact.

“Well,” she drawled, “I’m guessing that class’s over now, so I don’t know about the lot of you but I’m going to go enjoy our new unexpected free time somewhere that’s not a dusty classroom. Want to come with, Claude ?” she impishly added like the little devil she was.

(Why don’t you come tell me what you figured out ?)

“As delightful as your company would be, Hilda dear, I’m afraid I’ve places to be,” he smiled back genially.

(Not today I won’t.)

“Oh, and what could those be ? I didn’t know you had anything fun planned for what was supposed to be lesson time. Perhaps you might take a poor, dreadfully bored maiden along with you then ?”

(Are you sure you won’t reconsider ?)

“Well, I had no plans beforehand, but hearing that Seteth is at the door has me mite nervous, as I was due to meet him yesterday and might have forgotten,” he demurred. “And while I would take you along with pleasure, I’m afraid it would be rather unbecoming of me. Surely, ladies of your class should not be seen drinking in taverns in the company of a man, no ?” he cheerily added.

(Absolutely.)

Lysithea’s outraged “Claude von Riegan !” interrupted Hilda’s banter, something he’d counted on and which his verbal sparring partner immediately recognised, but it was already too late. In the time she’d been distracted while he’d pretended to head off to the door, he’d reached the same window Robin had previously opened.

“See y’all later,” he happily waved, ignoring Lysithea’s injunction to come back right now, Lorenz’s rebuke and Marianne’s concerned look while basking a little in the rest of the class’s amusement.

What could he say, he did love attention — just not scrutiny.

Hilda gave him an amused look, and gave a small nod to signal her admitting defeat. That was all he needed, so without further ado he followed suit from his teacher and jumped out the window, already plotting out the quickest route to town.

Unlike his teacher, he stuck the landing.

* * *

It didn’t take Claude long to track down the shop, and by extension Robin, who was by all appearances doing just what he’d promised : laughing at a miserable-looking Anna, face planted on her counter as she audibly groaned.

“I did tell you to slow down after the eigth one, you know.”

“I’m an Anna — we can handle our drink normally !” was the indignant — yet muffled — reply.

“Nope, most of your sisters can. You, however, clearly can’t. Actually, did you know you’re kind of a sad drunk ?” was the happy rebuttal.

“Ergh, don’t remind me. Also, my money senses are tingling. Did a potential client that is probably loaded but chancy with his coin just enter ?”

“If it’s the one I’m expecting, most likely,” was Robin’s cheery answer, freezing him in place and sending a shiver through his bones.

He hadn’t made a sound, neither of them were looking at him, and he most certainly hadn’t warned Robin he would be coming…

Except that Robin had directly invited him, because Claude was the only one in the class who would know which merchant he was talking about and where to find her.

“Guilty as charged, professor,” he just shrugged, pulling up a couple of of crates and sitting himself next to them at the counter. “After such a kind invitation, how could I not ?”

Robin gave him a look that told him he clearly saw the lie for what it was, but played along. Anna lifted her head from her arms and gave him a lidless stare, far from her usual exuberance.

“Hey, you’re the Riegan kid from the last time. Whatever you’re here for, don’t be too loud, and before you go, remember you’re just sitting on my latest shipment of dried Albinean greater foxglove, which is a bit milder in effect than the Fódlani varieties. In the crate under that, there’s various distilled fish venoms, you might like the Southern mottled stonefish one — though I recommend you disguise it well with other components, it has quite the kick to it. Anyway, since you’re Alliance, let’s call the prices Derdrian Dock Exchange standards for the stuff you can find there plus fifteen percent for my shipping costs and another ten because I wanna and you won’t find it elsewhere. For the rest, we can discuss it if you want anything,” she disinterestedly told him.

Well it was slightly terrifying, being anticipated thus, and she was clearly angling to rip him off again, but those _did_ sound really interesting and at least she didn’t look like she cared much about what he did with the stuff.

He turned to look at Robin.

“Who am I to judge a student willing to further his knowledge when it comes to his passions ? Don’t let me being here get in the way of your business, kid,” he smiled, though it was less annoying than usual. Perhaps because, Claude was shocked to find, it contained a hint of truth to it this time. Rather than his usual patronising, obnoxious demeanour, he was truly giving off the “teacher amused by his student’s antics” vibe.

Well go figure.

“Not many around who’d be that at ease with it, you know ?” he asked, because how could he resist trying to fish for more ?

Robin just laughed.

“Claude, one day where I have more time and want to have nightmares, I’ll tell you about a lady called Tharja, arguably my single most loyal adjutant, and you’ll understand why your forays into poison will never scare me, and why Hubert will always be adorable more than anything to me,” he simply demurred, before reaching for his purse.

Claude tried not to shiver at the knowledge that the man apparently had what sounded like a skilled, possibly crazy poisoner as a right-hand woman (?) that even he seemed to be scared of. And carefully filed away for his later notes that Robin seemed to associate Hubert with underhanded scheming, which everyone just assumed but here just seemed to be taken for granted. Interesting.

“Anna, think you can dig us out a tea set and a pot of Plegian Bloom ? I haven’t met an Anna that hasn’t got a soft spot for it yet, so I’m assuming you’ve got a stash somewhere,” he asked, digging through his purse.

“Sure do, but it’s not exactly common around here, so I’ll need — and never mind, I’ll go fetch it,” she interrupted herself when Robin dropped a small handful of coins on the counter. “And kid, don’t fall for his bullshit, he doesn’t care because he’s got some crazy constitution and has figured out how to purge himself with magic, so you couldn’t kill him with that if you tried.”

Claude noticed she’d perked up just a little from her previous moroseness at the clink of the coins, but most of his attention was on collecting yet another puzzle piece about their mysterious teacher. Namely, for one, that he was apparently a mage and probably a skilled one ? He’d never heard of that poison purging trick, so it couldn’t be that common.

“Well, while Anna’s making the tea, let’s talk shop, shall we ? You obviously have a thought or two about my lesson,” he invited him.

“Oh, not much, not much,” Claude humbly tittered, trying to gain time to figure out how to articulate this best. “But you told us quite the story, you know, Prof ? A man can’t help but be a little curious after all that.”

Robin just gave a full laugh at that, and once again Claude was struck by the fact that it sounded more genuine than his usual. In fact, the other man, while still fundamentally similar, was acting a bit more subdued, generally speaking.

“Oh, Claude von Riegan, you’re pretty brazen, I’ll grant you that, and I can’t say I don’t like your style, but I’m better at this than you — don’t feel bad about it, it’s just a matter of practice, and me being amazing. You’re better off dropping the whole thing in private, you know.” he amusedly told him.

If he’d hoped Claude would relax, then boy was he dead wrong.

“Huh ? What do you mean, Prof ?” was all he answered, once again trying to buy time to come up with better.

Instead, most of the geniality bled off Robin’s face, leaving only a stern sort of… pity, if he had to name it ?

“Claude, playing the fool is great fun, and if you can pull it off consistently it’s an excellent tactic in public environments and places where you cannot be sure of who can be trusted, and I can see you at least built your persona by amplifying some existing character traits rather than from the ground up, which is frankly much easier and more likely to help you be consistent, but let me warn you right now : the more and the longer you keep it up, the harder you’ll find to ever take it off. So until you can find people you trust enough to do so, feel free to do so around me and Lucina — you’re not fooling either of us.”

And after that solemn warning, he went back to what was almost a fond smile.

“Something to think about. You’re pretty fun to have around and I’d hate to have you shed your human skin and become a giant arcane eye in a bid to keep constant watch over the actions of those around you,” he added nonchalantly, and Claude just had to ask.

“… I’m sorry, but is this something that happens frequently ?”

“Oh that specifically ? Not that I know of, but fear, paranoia and despair have led men to stupider things, usually achieved through an abundance of magic and an equally abundant lack of common sense. Just wait ‘till we get to Ylissean history and you hear about Emperor Hardin. Guy almost accidentally a whole continent through dark magic and dragon summoning because he wanted to save his loveless marriage. Or hell, hear about Gharnef, who was the dark mage involved with that debacle and _another_ continent-spanning disaster a few years beforehand, just because he wasn’t his master’s favourite pupil.”

Okay, that was frightening but also, Claude had to admit, sounded like one hell of a story.

“Wait, if that Gharnef, nearly destroyed the continent once, why was he still around ?” he asked, train of thought suddenly interrupted by the realisation.

Robin, just gave a small laugh.

“For the same reason all our problems always come back to bite us in the ass, which I already mentioned : sealing. He’d taken a part of _another_ Fire Emblem, and sealed his soul within it, meaning that when he was killed, his consciousness remained and he came back for another round a few years later.”

And now they’d skipped the frightening part to the horrifying.

“But then, how did he die ?”

There was another short bark of laughter from Robin, but this time it was distinctly humourless, though not in his usual annoying manner — it was harsher than that.

“Easy — he didn’t. His soul is still sealed within the stone, nowadays known as Sable, which had until recently traditionally been held by High Priest of a country called Plegia, and we all politely pretend it’s gone and don’t raise it up.”

“So what, he’s… immortal ?”

The more Claude was hearing about the outside world’s history, the less he was sure he should be looking forward to finding it out.

Robin just shrugged.

“Depends on a few things. Your degree of belief in the permanence of the soul, for one. But perhaps more saliently, the fact is he’s been locked inside a rock, without any possibility to interact with the world, for the last two thousand years, kid. His soul most likely lost any semblance of coherence long ago, and as someone who’s actually held Sable for a short while, and knows both its previous holder and the current one, I can tell you that while the thing is crammed full of more dark magic than almost anything I’ve ever seen, if there’s a living consciousness within it, then it’s been quiet for a long while because no one’s heard it.”

Nevermind ! The thought of a slow descent into madness and then unconsciousness as you were trapped in the void for millennia was actually more horrifying than the thought of an immortal dark mage, who knew ?

His face must have shown something of his feelings, because Robin gave a much more honest laugh.

“Yeah, Claude, if you’ll take only one of my pieces of advice, even though you should probably take a lot more because most people have to pay me for this stuff, you know, messing around with dark magic and souls is the best way to have a terrible time for the rest of your guaranteed extra-short life. Stay away from that if you can. Also, since you’ve an interest in poisons, Alchemy, which is the manifestation of dark magic into the realm of the physical and… look, just stay away from experimental dark magic, it’s just not worth it like ninety-five percent of the time, and the other five percent of the time usually has too high a cost. Even casual use often ends up taking a toll on the body of most users — noticed Hubert’s slight unhealthy pallor ? It’s actually a sign he’s probably a decent human being deep inside, because it means he’s fuelling his spells with his own life force rather than that of others, but, well, literally using your life force to beat people up. Not my cup of tea.”

“I can see why,” Claude replied, slightly disturbed, but eager to rally himself and regain a bit of composure. “Hate to imagine what it’d do to my skin — it’s a useful thing, being this pretty.”

“Ha — Yes, I don’t doubt you get enough mileage out of it. Speaking of tea, though, here’s Anna, and with her with can perhaps address the question that brought you here,” said Robin, as the merchant indeed came back with a tray containing three small cups of coloured glass and an elongated pot, in a matching engraved silver.

An Almyran set. He cursed himself for relaxing.

“See, Claude, I had an inkling you’d be the one to pick up the crumbs I left for all of you. Do you know why ?”

“Surely you were impressed by the speed of my wit ?” he chanced, smiling smugly to hide his unease, as Anna poured them all a glass. It didn’t much work, he figured.

“That too, actually,” he unexpectedly allowed, “but there’s another reason, and it has to do with words. More specifically, how we think them.”

Well that wasn’t what he’d expected.

“See, as we grow up, we learn our language, and at some point through this process we stop separating concepts from sounds, because after having associated a sound and a concept often enough, we unconsciously stop thinking that there even must be a difference between the two — even though other languages must associate that concept with another set of sounds.”

“I’d never thought of it that way, but I suppose it makes sense, though I fail to see the point.”

“The point, Claude von Riegan, is in the tea,” he cryptically said, looking for all the world like he was having a blast as Anna finished adding a dash of honey to their glasses.

“The tea ?”

“The tea. You see, Plegia, much as I might regret it, is my home country. It’s mostly one big desert hellhole. And, its many cultural issues aside, it shares many facets of life with other desert nations. Concepts you encounter in daily life : tea and other warm drinks to better quench thirst, a similar kind of flora, using honey as a sweetener over harder to obtain sugar, drinking smaller quantities because one understands the value of water… Those are concepts, ideas which are common to many desert nations, and therefore ones they have associated sounds to in their languages in order to better communicate and interact with them.

“That’s why I’ve had a variant of this tea, which I and most on the Ylissean continent know as Plegian Bloom, in almost every continent I’ve been to, and even though the name was always different, it did not change the fact that it was fundamentally only a slight variation on the same concept : tea, flower petals, mint and honey, brewed in hot water and taken in small recipients, not unlike that Almyran set, hence why I picked it,” he carried on, and Claude thought he was finally beginning to see where he was headed with this.

He also felt himself unwind a little as he realised why he’d picked that particular set — it hadn’t been aimed at him, then.

He raised his cup to his lips, along with Robin, allowing the achingly familiar smell to waft up to his nose.

“In Plegia, even though most of the population speaks an Archanean variant nowadays, in the traditional dialect we’d call it e _sfah-an jayi.”_

They both took a sip, and Claude finally relaxed as a taste of home engorged his mouth and his entire body lit up from satisfying a craving he’d not realised he had. Even though pine needles were his favourite from back home, he’d still liked to drink more than that alone, and while you could find rose petal and mint blends readily enough, none of them had quite the right taste to them. He closed his eyes and breathed out slowly, enjoying the taste.

“What do you call it in Almyran anyway ?” Robin continued in an impossibly casual tone.

“ _Warad atta_ ,” he replied and in the instant the words left his mouth he knew he’d made a horrible mistake as all traces of contentment and good humour left his body.

He opened his eyes, and here was Robin, smiling smugly at him and looking entirely satisfied with himself, next to Anna, who while still looking a bit under the weather was also definitely amused by what had just happened.

“I did warn you, Claude, that I was better than you at this, and I did also warn you that you should probably listen to my advice. A lesson learned for the next time, hmm ?” he pointedly commented, looking far too at ease for what he’d just done.

“What do you want ?” he asked, his tone dead, though at least he kept defeat out of it. A quick look around only served to ascertain the truth : he couldn’t dash out of here fast enough to take Robin by surprise, and after seeing Lucina in action he was not taking any chances in a fight. Better to first see what he wanted.

“Believe it or not, nothing besides making three points. The first, which I’ve already made, is that when I give you advice, I do mean it and you should really try to at least take it into account. The second is an extension of my earlier point about personas, which is that by keeping that mask of yours you wear to satisfy your paranoia at all times, even when in relative privacy and with people you can if not trust at least count on it not being very useful for, you grow sloppy. You’re trying to be on high alert all the time with everyone, and you’re tiring yourself out and therefore making mistakes. Consider investing in a genuine friendship, a trusted ally, or at least an indifferent confidant.

“The third,” he smiled cockily, “was merely to answer your question : why did I know it would be you who would figure it out ? Because as the only one in that class who speaks more than one language — and judging from your nearly impeccable Fódlani I’d wager you even grew up with both — you were the only one who would. Your classmates may _know_ , academically speaking, that a concept can be associated with differing sets of sounds, but you are the only one who _understands_ it. And so when I tell you all to think about the Fire Emblem, where your classmates think about the ensemble of sounds ‘fire’ and ‘emblem’,you think about the concept of ‘a symbol which represents something’ and ‘that thing which burns stuff’ and automatically supply appropriate words for them. Framed in the context of divinity, religion and power, there was only one match possible.”

“The Crest of Flames,” Claude coldly stated.

“A common mistranslation of other Fire Emblems in many languages, actually,” Robin amusedly commented. “It was funny to find it here as the actual name. And really, what is the Crest of Flames, if one believes the sacred texts, but a portion of divine power sealed within a human being ? After all, it’s the only Crest which was never inherited. Food for thought,” he smirked, and Claude hated how by playing with his natural curiosity Robin was getting him to relax slowly.

“How did you figure it out ?”

“Well I just told you, didn’t I ?” Robin answered confusedly, before his face lit up with understanding. “Oh, you mean the Almyran thing. Well, first of all, no offence intended but your skin tone’s not _quite_ there for a full Fódlani, though I suppose to people unfamiliar with other ethnicities it could pass off as a good tan. But mostly, it’s the way you drink that told me you were some manner of Almyran noble.”

Claude felt himself freeze up again as Robin continued his explanation. That last detail was _really_ not something he could afford to let be known.

“I mean out of all these students, you’re the only one who always drinks moderately and without waste whatever liquid is in front of him — the only one who understands just how valuable quenching one’s thirst is. It’s something which most of the Plegians I’ve worked with also do, and which I also do, though to a lesser extent, so it’s easy to pick up for me. So seeing that, I assumed you came from a desert nation, and what do you know, there is one right next to the Alliance ! As for the noble part, well, you _always_ check your drink for poison,” he explained, in a tone that implied the conclusion should be really obvious, but Claude was failing to see the correlation here.

Letting out a sound of frustration as he saw his audience wasn’t following him, Robin elaborated.

“See, even I heard that the latest von Riegan heir sort of popped out of thin air very recently from places unknown, crest and all. Now knowing your Almyran heritage, we know you could have either grown up in the Alliance or in Almyra. However, a noble with a Crest of Riegan would have definitely been known about in the Alliance, meaning that if you grew up in Fódlan, it was as a commoner. But you always check your drink for poison. Now, good, efficient poison is no simple thing to get your hands on, and harder yet to use skillfully and correctly — that’s why it is, for the most part, a pastime of the rich, so to say, who can afford to hire poisoners and/or pay for materials. Meaning you come at the very least from a well-to-do family. And someone who is as paranoid as you are over this is someone who is most definitely used to expecting such attempts, so we can assume this means you have enemies, and that they are numerous.

“Someone like that would definitely not have been a complete unknown to anyone when they appeared in Alliance society, because someone with plentiful enemies is someone who is known. That means you come from an Almyran family of likely considerable means. This even gives us a likely motive for your enemies, if we assume your Fódlani heritage is known (which is likely considering you bear your Riegan blood within you in a very literal way), as thanks to the underlying history there it has probably not been well-received. Going back to the weapon of choice, poison, we can then assume that some of these enemies would have been nobles, who could resort to such means. But if you were simply from a moneyed family, imagining the disfavour having a Fódlani in the family would have brought you I cannot imagine that said nobles could not have achieved their ends through the exertion of political clout, meaning you had some degree of immunity to it. The easiest way you could have immunity to their political clout was if you had your own, hence, Almyran noble. Did I hit the mark ?” he concluded, cocky grin out in full force as Anna (who he’d completely forgotten about) gave an amused little whistle.

Claude just sat there, dumbstruck at how the tiniest of details had dismantled his entire cover.

“I told you, you got sloppy — by being too careful, you made me watch you.”

Still, Claude could find nothing to say.

“You know, kid,” added Anna, “don’t feel too bad. You done fucked up by _Robin_ standards, but those are pretty unreasonable. If it makes you feel better, I hadn’t picked up on the noble part and believe me, I’ve been around and seen some shit.”

“But you knew I was Almyran,” he countered, feeling distinctly not reassured.

“Well, I’ve been to Alliance dockyards to buy merchandise enough. Sailors, they’re not exactly picky with who they spend their nights, and sometimes you get kids out of that — and most of them end up on ships too or working on the docks. You learn to recognise the look of them after a while,” she offered, and weirdly enough that did comfort him. He was unlikely to meet anyone in Fódlani high society with _that_ particular experience.

“Anyway,” Robin joined back in, “sorry to have rattled you, Claude, but someone needed to burst your bubble before you found a stupid and creative way to get yourself killed, so I designated myself. Keep in mind what I told you, yeah ? And do seek me out if you have further history-related questions that I probably can’t answer in an official position, because that probably will trickle back to Rhea somehow and I’ll get an earful,” he winked at him, slipping his charming fool mask back on. “Enjoy the tea. It’s on me, and you looked like you could use a little taste of home. Don’t worry about me spilling your secrets, I don’t really care about your local politics and besides, I’m quite familiar with being a desert rat among the company of upstanding gentlemen of high society.”

The last bit was said with a wry note of humour, and Claude was brought back to their first encounter, when he’d introduced himself as ‘Robin the Foundling’ and mentioned being an important retainer to what they now all knew was the royal family of a country that was most definitely not called Plegia.

Perhaps he did understand after all.

“Don’t worry about Anna, you’re a client, and an Anna doesn’t mess with her clients so long as they stay on the level with her,” he added as an after-thought. “Anyway, see you around !”

Robin stepped out, absent-mindedly waving behind his back, and Claude was left there with a pot of tea and a still-hungover merchant.

“You shouldn’t worry about him, Clo-clo. Robin’s weird and he can be a shady underhanded bastard, but he’s a good guy at heart ; if you knew half the things he’s done, you’d believe it too.”

Claude looked at her, amused despite himself.

“Clo-clo ?”

“Well, you’re going to become a regular as soon as you remember what you’re sitting on and realise I can get all manner of similar things on demand, no matter how rare or obscure, and besides Robin’s right. You’re really wound up too tight, you should kick back and unwind a bit. So, Clo-clo.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any way to change the name to something slightly more dignified,” he asked. He could not resist a little smile.

“Nope !” she added with a bright grin, before wincing slightly at the sudden movement, which drew a chuckle out of him.

“Well, while you’re working away at your hangover, I don’t suppose you could tell me these things you know about Robin ?” he asked, though without much hope in his voice.

He poured himself another cup, and luxuriated in the taste that flooded his mouth and the warmth that ran down his throat.

“Nope !” was her answer again. “It’s more fun that way !”

“Thought you’d say that,” he admitted ruefully. “So, about that stonefish venom ?”

And as the conversation turned into mercantile yet good-natured banter as he picked his mojo back up, Claude tried to let himself relax, and was surprised to find himself almost succeeding, for the first time in a long while.

* * *

At the door, besides the always-friendly gatekeeper, Robin had the unfortunate surprise to see a far less friendly face.

“Robin,” Seteth said, face carved out of granite and barely controlled ire oozing out of his voice. “If you would follow me.”

“Sure thing,” he breezily answered, feeling as though now was not the time to be contrarian.

Seteth did not say another word as they set off.

That their footsteps took them towards Rhea’s office comforted him in his choice.

In fact, as the door opened to let him see an upset-looking Lucina sat in front of a visibly furious yet for now still restrained Rhea, now was maybe not even the time to entertain himself.

A lesser man, he thought, would have felt terror as the both of them turned their gazes upon him, willingness to blame him for their current state of irritation clearly apparent in their eyes.

He just felt understandable concern at having pushed Rhea too far a bit earlier than expected. His read of her had her definitely more composed than this.

But no matter. In the end, it all came back to the same thing.

“Robin,” the Archbishop intoned ominously, voice oozing menace. “It seems we are in dire need of a _talk_ about what is appropriate material to teach my students, and about the consequences of abusing my trust and _lying_ to me.”

Really, he should have not have had to resort to this to force her into having this conversation with him. If she’d actually accepted the last seven times he’d tried to initiate it instead of running away from the very conversation she’d told them they would have, he wouldn’t have had to trick her into it. And as he’d compared his curriculum to the content of Hanneman’s history lessons and the honestly meagre offering of approved history texts, it had become urgently apparent it was needed.

“Of course, Rhea,” he smiled cordially, tone completely mild, preparing his pushback. “Let’s _talk_. More precisely, let’s talk about some of the more shocking notions these kids seem to have, and why they seem to come from your Church.”

As her face morphed into an inhuman sneer of pure hatred he never thought he’d see again etched into human traits after Grima shed his doppelganger form, he figured that maybe he didn’t quite have as good a read on Rhea’s personality as he’d anticipated.

At least this time he’d warned Lucina.

Mostly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh, let's talk about that infodump ? Fair warning, worldbuilding ahead.
> 
> I feel like a fair bit of my headcanon for the basic FE timeline is well-accepted, and I don't think anything within this chapter will have surprised anyone familiar with the franchise, but let's quickly talk about Tellius being the first continent, and the logical repercussions of that after Ashunera brings the other continents back up. See, Ike is apparently famous everywhere, or at least it's implied so in Awakening. More specifically, in the ending of Radiant Dawn and in Awakening we learn he's not famous as the guy that saved the world that one time, but as a wandering hero of plentiful deeds. So we can assume he's traveled in a heck of a lot of places, that he could do so many things and so many people could know of him. But Radiant Dawn specifically mentions he left Tellius, for the continents which had *just been raised out of water*. Meaning she had to have also raised back or created anew people to live on them, because otherwise Ike would have just been this one creepy hermit walking around uninhabited stretches of land for the rest of his life. So not all of the people on FE!World are descended from Tellius, and they would have had distinct cultures or languages of their own - nonetheless, Tellius would have been the most well-established and therefore influential polity in the world, and that would have necessarily influenced all the others.
> 
> Not to mention Ashunera sort of left the world to the dragon tribes, who were from Tellius, and Shadow Dragon/Gaiden/Mystery of the Emblem pretty explicitly tell us that quite a few of them at the beginning took a VERY active role when it came to ruling everybody else, and I can't imagine they wouldn't have brought a little Tellius with them.
> 
> Anyway, that's enough on the worldbuilding for now.
> 
> Claude ! Claude. Claude's scenes were going to be more funny, until I realised that he'd mostly been around as comic relief whenever he was speaking, and I feel like there's plenty of that and we don't get to see as often his more calculating and serious side. So instead, I went with that. Also because Claude's mental health just worries me, I mean, sure Dimitri's is worse but honestly Claude was really due a mental breakdown too by the time you reach post-timeskip and without protagonist friendship magic he'd probably have one.
> 
> Which means I get to explore his dynamic with Hilda too ! I like Hilda. She's just a fun character, both to play as and play with. But often in TH you see her having this instant bromance with Claude, and while I do love how easily they connect, I feel like many people also forget that a) Claude is one hell of a paranoid mofo, b) he would have actually figured out very early that Hilda is wayyy more perceptive than she pretends and c) she is a Goneril, aka the people that have been fighting Almyrans since forever pretty much. So it's interesting to have these two people who are just so compatible friendship-wise, to whom banter and fun come so naturally yet who are both actually very closed and struggling to keep the other far away enough, though Claude is the worst of the two. Fun times.
> 
> Oh and Byleth gets Black Eagles. I've spent so long hacking at this chapter I'd almost forgotten she's in it. As for the reasoning for her going to the Eagles, well, part of it is honestly simply because looking at the game I always felt that if you held the devs at gunpoint and asked them what was the single true canon route, it would probably be Silver Snow, and I try not to step on perceived canon toes if nothing calls for it, and because I felt that for this Byleth in particular the reason she gives in-chapter is plenty true. I spent a long time during planning hesitating between Deer and Eagles for her, until to help me choose I planned out that very conversation with Claude and Edelgard, and it just became evident to me.
> 
> If you're scared because of the already stringent lack Deer, well, don't worry, Lysithea and Hilda have scenes upcoming very soon and Lorenz and Leonie a little later.
> 
> Other things to mention ? Right, before anyone gets to me on that, Ill nip it straight in the bud : this is not AnnaxClaude shipbait, hilarious as the pairing is now that I think about it.
> 
> Also I really like tea, in case that wasn't obvious. The one they're drinking here is heavily inspired by Mariage Frères's Thé au Sahara, if you're curious. Honestly, expect more tea references throughout this. 
> 
> Plegian is inspired by Turkish and a hint of Farsi, Almyran by Arabic, particularly Maghrebi Arabic, though that's probably never coming up again.
> 
> Anyway, that's way too long a note and I'm actually running out of characters for it, so thank you for reading !


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, I may intellectually know that it's barely been over a week since I've updated this but I still feel like I'm far behind schedule here.
> 
> Anyway, this here chapter, at over 9k words, is technically shorter than the last one but compared to my plans of a nice 5k chapter to unwind after the previous one, I'm a bit annoyed I didn't manage to cut off more from it. Still, progress is progress.
> 
> As with the last couple of chapters, I'm pretty busy at the moment so proofreading is not exactly optimal, but I don't have the heart to reread through this another four times and I'm fairly sure it's at least mostly legible, so I hope there's nothing too bad left in there.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it !

It was one thing to know on a fundamental level that dragons were never truly meant to be contained within human bodies, and she’d already witnessed this truth once at its most grotesque when facing Grima, but Lucina had not seen it often enough that she was inured to the scene playing out in front of her.

Even if it was milder in nature than her previously mentioned example, the way Rhea’s face instantly transitioned from barely-restrained fury to bestial rage was intensely jarring. And perhaps more relevantly, it was menacing enough (and reminiscent of too many nightmares) to send her hand straight to Falchion’s pommel, though she managed to swallow down the reflex in time before escalating the situation irrevocably.

It was one thing to know on an intellectual that Robin could not always be right, but he had a manner of convincing you unlike any other person… This time, however, she would not let him bury that one away quietly. He’d clearly made a significant miscalculation when it came to Rhea’s personality. And had seemingly once again failed to inform her of whatever his latest shenanigans must have been.

What she had to put up with from him…

But now was not the time for idle thoughts, if the wordless snarl that had escaped the Archbishop meant anything.

Her grip tensed around the hilt of her sword, and Robin, while still looking relaxed enough, had his hands ready to channel a Thunder spell of some kind, judging by the reassuring hum of staticshe could hear from the pocket where he’d stuck his left hand. And if nothing else could convince her this was a potentially serious situation, that was the pocket where he kept his personal tome, rather than the lesser ones he kept to avoid drawing attention.

Thankfully, neither of them needed to act upon their restlessness, because it was Seteth of all people who defused the situation, his worried injunction cutting through the charged air.

“Rhea !”

There was a moment of stillness during which they all thought she’d ignore him and jump over her desk, until self-control bled into her face at an agonisingly slow crawl, settling her visage into something that was still far too close to apoplectic but at least looked reasonably human.

There was a long, heavy silence while they all waited for her to speak.

“… I expect that the two of you have an _excellent_ reason to say this, or I will otherwise be forced to consider that you no longer find the Academy — and, indeed, the whole of Fódlan — to your tastes, and act upon this in the appropriate manner.”

Despite the formal wording of her request, she was all but spitting the words at them.

“So bring out your excuses this time, Robin. But keep in mind I am growing _tired_ of your disrespect.”

Unfortunately, she had addressed Robin directly, meaning Lucina had to find a good way to insert herself in that conversation quickly before Robin found a way to—

“Well, first of all, you broke our bargain first,” he began, and she braced for the worst. “I mean, you were supposed to tell us about the actual history of this place, except I kept trying to have that conversation and you kept blowing me off. So naturally I thought about at least doing the prep work myself, and I talked to Hanneman and borrowed some books from him, except that there’s basically only scraps to be found and I can smell it’s all been doctored anyway from miles away. I mean, I can find written accounts from the court of Emperor Hardin some two thousand years ago and you’re telling me that there was no trace of recorded history before a thousand years ago here ?”

“ _Robin_ ,” she hissed warningly between her teeth as Rhea’s complexion darkened. “The _point_.”

“Ah, yes,” he replied, obviously flustered by her irritation, as though it had not been apparent the whole time. Nonetheless, he hardened his expression again and picked himself back up. “So, Archbishop, after these fruitless endeavours, it then became clear to me that if I wanted to learn _anything_ , considering you were avoiding me, I would have to see what knowledge people _lacked_ rather than what they knew. I modified my intended lesson plan a little towards that end, and started it out with the story of the world’s creation — which I was saving up for later because of its shock value —, a story widely accepted to be broadly correct _on account of all the eyewitnesses, one of which is still alive to tell the tale_ _and plenty of which recorded their knowledge_. A story which, while an intrinsic part of Tellian tradition, has mostly been carried to the world’s four corners by the _dragons themselves_ , which, need I remind you, you claim to be a part of. Imagine my surprise when not only have none of my students ever heard anything remotely similar, but seem amazed at the very notion of dragons even being real, and cower in fear and stupor at the simple concept of heresy.

“So yes, _Seiros_ , while I did not walk into this blindly, I have severe concerns about what exactly you expect of me, considering what I’m working with, and your unwillingness to uphold your part of the bargain you yourself struck. Are these enough excuses for you ?”

There was a long silence as her lover and the Archbishop both simmered in anger, but she was at least heartened by Seteth’s clear discomfort with the current situation. Even though she had no doubt he would stand by Rhea should things go south, there seemed to be something about what Robin had said which had tickled his conscience. Of course, he also could hardly stand Robin, but she would take her victories where she could get them.

Finally, Rhea spoke, and it was thankfully with an argumentative tone rather than a hateful one this time.

“And you could not _talk_ to me about this ?” she sneered. “Despite what you may believe, and what may even be true outside these lands, the world does not revolve around you. I have not had this conversation with you yet because it is a painful tale that I must gather myself for, especially in preparation for telling it to a callous _rat_ of your kind. You have incessantly pestered me over the last few days even though I have been busy dealing with a potential schism in my church, getting the Academy running and on top of that dealing with the return of an old friend I thought I would never see again, I hardly have time of my own to rest, and you expect me to drop everything at any given time to indulge your endless curiosity ? And my refusal means you must go behind my back, lie and cheat and make a joke out of my authority in order to get what you want, even after how indulgent I have been in your regard ?”

It had been a long time since she’d met anyone that Robin had managed to sincerely irritate that much, and as lukewarm as her feelings for the woman were, she could not help but empathise with her slightly on this matter. Oh, Robin was right, there was some definite reluctance on her part to honour her part of the deal, but clever as he could be he was not helping his case in the slightest.

“Oh please ! As though you would ever let me talk to you willingly in the first place ! I have to break into your damn office every time I even want a simple word with you !”

“You breaking into my office constantly is _exactly why_ I never have the patience to talk to you, you disrespectful lout ! You’ve never even tried to schedule a meeting with Seteth once. Once !”

And then suddenly, as she saw their grievances dissolve into what could only be considered bickering in front of a very confused Seteth’s disbelieving eyes, she suddenly understood.

These two, as they currently were, were incapable of coexisting for long without generating friction. And in the instant where she mentally superposed an indignantly stern Kjelle over Rhea and a petulant Cynthia over Robin (a terrifying image she would not dwell upon any longer than necessary), the automatic response to this situation just escaped her before she could control it.

“Well unlike you overgrown lizards, most of us have a mortal lifespan, so excuse us if we cannot afford endless deferrals when—”

“Enough !”

The noise of her fist pounding the desk suddenly and her authoritarian bark stopped the two currently squabbling grown adults straight in their tracks, making them jump in their seats and suddenly look around, as though remembering that they were not, in fact, alone.

Lucina had a sudden realisation that she’d just told arguably the single most powerful entity, both in terms of political clout and personal might, in the entire continent to shut up.

Well, it was too late anyway, so might as well roll with it and capitalise on the shock value while she could.

“If the two of you insist on behaving like children, then you will be treated as children,” she announced, blessing her long practice in masking her exasperation and tension. “Seteth, you are going to find us the closest thing to a training ground hidden from prying eyes which can take a battering this monastery can offer, and you are both going to get this out of your system so that we can have a civilised conversation afterwards.

“ _Am I clear_ ?”

Robin’s immediate squeak of “ _Yes ma’am_ ” drew a dark satisfaction out of her — she’d trained him well — but he was not the one she was worried about. Rhea and Seteth just looked at her, gobsmacked and in the former’s case uncomprehending of what had just happened, which she would count as a win. It was a step up from naked rage, after all. Just as the first signs of outrage began to bleed back into Rhea’s face, however, the support she’d counted on arrived.

After all, she could well recognise the look of an exasperated sibling anywhere, even filtered through Seteth’s harried and frustrated demeanour. Rhea and Seteth might not have ever disclosed any information about what they were to each other, but she was willing to bet her sword hand that they were closely related.

“Very well. Follow me,” was all he said, sighing in resignation.

“Seteth !”

“Now, Rhea,” he _tutted_. Since when did Seteth even do such a thing ? “The lady Lowell is quite correct. As boorish as Robin’s conduct has been, you are both shaming yourselves with this current display, and I do not foresee any improvement as is. Better to channel this productively, as neither you nor I have the time to waste on constantly being at Robin’s throat.”

His objection, spoken as though it was the most reasonable thing in the world, managed to reach her where Lucina’s attempt to impose her authority did not. The look of betrayal that had surfaced on the Archbishop’s face slowly abated, replaced by a reluctant wariness that drew another sigh from Seteth.

“Rhea, you are being offered a chance to beat up Robin consequence-free. If only for my own catharsis, will you please just take it ?”

“… I suppose when put like this, it does sound like an elegant enough solution.”

“Then I am glad we are in agreement,” Lucina added, before looking at Seteth, who turned around and headed for the door.

Catching a slightly betrayed look from her lover, she just sent him a small glare, at which he winced before conceding.

_Yes, you insufferable man, this was entirely avoidable._

There was no point feeling bad about him anyway, she reckoned, considering the increasingly excited cast to his features as they followed Seteth deep into the bowels of the monastery, through a set of tunnels she was fairly sure had never been hinted at before.

Of course there were secret tunnels.

* * *

When Hilda heard the knock outside, she didn’t immediately react, because the one she was waiting for wouldn’t have bothered announcing himself at his own door.

It wasn’t until Lysithea’s voice unexpectedly rang out with an “Open up, I know you’re hiding in here” that she deigned to move out. She hadn’t planned on getting involved with whatever was going on, but a quick revision of her plans had her finding a place in them for her diminutive housemate instantly. Besides, she’d accomplished her current task and gotten Raphael to take her turn at the stables already. Offering him a quick goodbye, she quickly exited his room.

“Claude, I swear that — Hilda ?” was Lysithea’s surprised reaction to seeing her exit from the opposite room.

“Hey, Lysithea !” she greeted her, carefully ignoring the little hint of disdain that crossed Lysithea’s eyes. It was, after all, the downside of her persona. “Unfortunately Claude’s still not come back from town, so it’s just us girls here, but I’m sure I can listen if you need to vent ?”

It was frankly adorable seeing Lysithea try to fumble into wording a polite refusal that didn’t boil down to ‘no thank you I don’t think you’re clever enough to follow and also you scare me’, which was thereabouts what she was reading from the quick panicked look that flashed across her eyes.

“I, well, that is… I reckon this is a matter between Claude and myself,” she valiantly attempted, regrouping herself admirably, but Hilda was just better at her than this.

“Oh ?” she crooned, leaning in slightly and making sure to pitch her voice down slightly. “So you mean you’re not here to ask him about what it is he figured out from today’s lesson that the rest of us missed, and why he then chose to run away rather than share it with the rest of us ?”

“What ? How did you know ?” was the panicked whisper she got in reply and my, she was right, Lysithea was simply too adorable. A note for later, but if she could just find the right accessories for her…

“Instantly — Claude’s a terrible liar when he’s not paying attention, you just have to know when to watch him. But how about you come with me and we have that discussion over a nice cup of tea ? No point standing there until our glorious leader deigns return, I’d say !”

“Well, I suppose…”

Good, she was off balance still, time to press on before she could get her moxie back. Lysithea was a good sort, but she could be oh so uptight at times. Grabbing her hand, she simply turned around and all but dragged the other girl along to her room. Time to work out how she could put her to use in getting Claude to stop being a stubborn idiot and just rely on them already.

* * *

The large underground room they had ended up in looked as though it had seen little use in some time, and Lucina supposed it was for the best considering the state it was currently being put in by the two who had invested it.

To her surprise, the Archbishop had not turned into a dragon, instead relying on a sword she apparently kept hidden in her robes (and how she managed to accomplish that was still a mystery) and magic, in a combination eerily mirrored by Robin, who had started out eager and a little arrogant and had quickly been forced to get serious after the first overpowered fire spell had nearly singed his head off.

He’d even actually pulled out his personal tome and genuinely channeled through it rather than just used it as a crutch for quick and dirty work.

So far, they’d mostly traded off low-level spells of their respective preference, fire and thunder, and had once neared each other to briefly engage in swordplay, but after neither of them sensed an overwhelming advantage they quickly withdrew, unwilling to commit. Though Rhea had not pushed, it seemed to Lucina’s eye that Robin was her lesser when it came to the sword, but the tactician was unpredictable enough she could not bet on it with absolute surety.

Nonetheless, the teasing was reaching its end. After all, they’d both just ascertained the other would probably survive the heavier artillery, and Rhea looked oh so very eager to unleash it. Robin… did enjoy an occasion or two to cut loose, but in this case also simply seemed as though he wanted to impress.

She was a bit surprised not to recognise the matrix that appeared in front of Rhea, however. Most of the magic around here had been fairly familiar.

“Ooh, I don’t know that one !” happily crowed her lover, and suddenly she was much more worried. “Fire family judging from the base but—”

“Agnea’s Arrow !” was Rhea’s resounding cry, and Lucina felt her fears justified when she realised it was the first spell she’d bothered to incant throughout the day.

The giant arrows of light which manifested around Rhea and made a dash for Robin only sealed the deal.

“Oh shit oh shit—” was his eloquent reaction before there was small flash of light and his whole general vicinity was bombarded. Despite the cloud of dust and debris the attack drew up, however, she could still clearly hear him, so he was most likely fine.

“Whew, setting Lissa up with Henry was totally worth learning Tomebreaker off him, that would have been an embarrassing — Thoron !”

Ah, so he’d been trying to use the fact he was under cover to charge a slightly more involved spell while distracting his opponent with small talk. Typical, but he probably shouldn’t have let slip that tidbit about her aunt. Even if it explained neatly how he’d ever learned Tomebreaker, which she’d never been quite sure about — it was a staple of Plegian mage training after all. Too costly a defence to keep up full time, though, and a bit too slow to activate in a fast-paced fight, so he’d likely begun readying it while pretending to study the spell matrix.

Lucina may have known intellectually that she was very much his equal in single combat, but there was something about the obnoxious ease with which he juggled all these things that could be truly infuriating at times.

His Thoron ripped straight through the space between them, Rhea flexing her magical might to weather the blow, until she suddenly seemed to remember that one could also use Tomebreaker offensively. With an impressive reaction speed, she began to form a familiar matrix that she managed to maintain through gritted teeth after being hit and launch at an unsuspecting Robin. The spell still looked familiar, but there was something off about…

“Was that a Light-aspected Nosferatu ? And no one here has heard of Tellius ? It’s been millenia since the rest of the world has switched to the Dark variant !” came the outraged reply, and she was shocked to realise he was right.

As the dust cleared, a mostly-fine-if-a-little-haggard Robin stood in the middle, still looking slightly gobsmacked at a Rhea who’d not enjoyed the Thoron but had regained most of her composure after leeching off Robin’s life force.

“Well, now I just have to see more !” he added with a cheer that belied not only his genuine excitement but also a newfound… respect ? She wished it hadn’t needed to come to this in order for him to realise that Rhea was not a fancy talking roadblock on his road to knowledge, but she would take her wins where she could get them.

“Seteth was right,” mused a surprised Rhea in answer. “This is wonderfully cathartic.”

As the both of them readied for another pass, Lucina judged there was probably little more to be done there, so she turned to the other spectator.

“While they are occupied, perhaps we might discuss more in-depth what makes for appropriate lecture material and what channels to go through should the need to discuss such issues arise ? Perhaps we could avoid a repeat of such incidents in the future ?”

Seteth just looked at the two who were getting increasingly vicious before shaking himself out of the his stupor. She supposed that not having to deal with the Shepherds on a daily basis would make scenes like this more surprising.

“Yes, I suppose we might as well.”

* * *

He’d not even been back for five minutes before there was a sweet, sedate little knock at his door that he immediately was wary of. Not because it was particularly unexpected, but because this was Hilda’s “I-am-but-a-harmless-young-lady” knock and that meant he was most likely about to get an earful. Nonetheless, he was under no illusions that he was going to escape punishment, so might as well own up to it.

“Hilda, my fairest of friends, what brings you to…” he began before even looking out the door, but stopped straight when he realised who else was on the other side.

“What, am I not fair enough for you ?” commented a very unimpressed Lysithea, flanking a delighted Hilda. “You break my heart. Now stop gaping and let us in, will you, Claude ?”

Well, this was unexpected, but quite honestly after today he reckoned he was pretty well kitted out to handle surprises. Besides, considering what he’d deduced of Hilda’s mood, he didn’t think the conversation subject was going to be much different — Hilda had just added another obstacle and/or witness to make sure he didn’t wiggle out of that one.

Good thing for him, then, that he’d just gotten a masterclass in taking control of a situation.

And if said masterclass had taught him anything, it was to start with tea.

“Of course, you bless me too with your presence Lysithea,” he said in the most earnest, sincere way he could. “Come on in, both of you, I’ll make some tea,” he urged them, fighting against well-ingrained instinct and showing them his back while giving them full access to his room, unsupervised.

He suppressed the urge to snap at Hilda to leave his newly acquired vials of exotic marine poisons alone, and instead focused on brewing a pot of his new purchase. It felt satisfying, in a somewhat ironic manner.

He did draw the line, however, at letting his housemates invent stupid new ways to die.

“I wouldn’t give it a sniff it if I were you, Hilda. The Dagdan azure sea snake may not have the most deadly venom out of all snakes, but a small dose is enough to lock up a horse’s muscles and inflict excruciating pain, so please put it down,” he advised, once again resisting the urge to snatch it out of her hands as she made a gesture to uncork the vial.

Thankfully, she couldn’t put it down fast enough.

“Why do you even have something like that ?” she asked, looking slightly disturbed and possibly horrified.

“I usually don’t,” he admitted, “but Anna had an interesting selection and I’d never worked with it before. I figured I might experiment with it as arrow coating. Would sure speed up a lot of hunts, I imagine. Anyway, tea’s steeping, so I imagine now you both want me to tell you what I picked up from the Prof’s lecture and why I legged it afterwards rather than tell you ?” he asked, maintaining his effort to sound as earnest as possible without seeming out of character.

Being _too_ honest would probably make him look more suspicious ; not that he could blame that on anyone but himself.

He was still very much himself, however, and therefore enjoyed it considerably when naked shock painted itself on the two girls’s faces.

“… Wait, so you’re just going to admit to it ? No dancing around the subject, no deflection ?” asked an astonished Hilda.

(Where’s the catch ?)

“Yep,” he happily replied with his best attempt at a peaceful yet teasing smile. Not his best practiced face, but he had the basics down.

(Nowhere !)

“That sounds… convenient,” chanced Lysithea, while Hilda gave a small nod and eyed him skeptically.

(I don’t buy it.)

Hilda might have chosen to have Lysithea over in order to double-team him, but by bringing someone with less social wiles than her, she’d also brought a double-edged sword along. And the slight confusion in his young housemate’s voice told him exactly what he needed to know : they’d come in with a script, and he’d successfully thrown them off it.

“I was always going to, you know. I just had to go and check a couple of things over with the Prof beforehand. Seeing as he was kind enough to invite me for a chat, I thought I’d take him up on it first.”

(I don’t see why, I’m being perfectly reasonable.)

“And I’m guessing you did that and now you know, so can you stop being so cagey and just tell already, Claude ?” Lysithea interrupted, and that was his the cue for his win in that little bout, because now he had initiative.

“Sure, but first of all, I should probably warn the two of you to be careful when dealing with him, because he’s not just smart, he’s quick. Embarrassed me rather mightily, I’ve got to say,” he began with a little self-deprecative chuckle that was half-performance, half-genuine. He’d calmed down enough to laugh about it now, but he still wasn’t a fan of the sensation.

“Claude von Riegan, embarrassed ? And here I thought you were entirely shameless,” tittered an amused Hilda, though she was still wary. She knew he was leading somewhere with this, but was willing to wait as he fetched the pot and began pouring them cups.

He added a dash of honey to each of them, then looked up at Lysithea, staring curiously, and added another spoonful to her cup. Her tastes were no secret to any of the Deer.

“Now that’s just hurtful, I’ll have you know I have at least some pride in my shining wit and repartee !” was his amused reply, and he took an instant to appreciate the ease with which they settled into this banter. He needed a touch of this after today. “So imagine my surprise when all he needed to outwit me was just offer me some tea and answer my questions honestly,” he smiled beatifically.

And there was the reaction he was waiting for, as the both of them immediately threw a paranoid glare at the teacups in their hands. Oh, he had needed that sweet sweet feeling of driving someone up the wall.

“… I thought you were going to be straight with us, Claude,” warned a no-longer quite so amused Hilda who couldn’t stop herself from waring a wary glance at all the vials and pouches he’d bought earlier today. Okay, he’d had his fun, it was probably for the best to get back on track now, before Lysithea’s angry stare set her cup on fire.

“I am, it’s seriously all it took him. A bit scary, but don’t worry, I’m not quite on that level yet,” he smiled with a little wink, and made a show of drinking first. “It’s actually the same tea he used. From his homeland, apparently..”

“Smells like one of these Almyran ones,” mused Hilda, as Lysithea tried a tentative sip, and her eyes lit up in interest at the taste of honey. She stealthily took a few more sips, and swore under her breath as she scalded her tongue.

Claude tried not to let himself tense at Hilda’s comments. The Goneril weren’t really known for trading in Almyran goods ; what they had, they usually seized off smugglers, merchants and prisoners, usually before throwing them into their gaols. But none of this was directly Hilda’s fault, so he let it go.

He couldn’t ignore it forever, but for now there were more pressing things.

“That’s because he’s actually from a desert country too. Funny story, but not really relevant right now,” he demurred, unwilling to draw attention to deserts and their inhabitants. “Anyway, remember this whole Fire Emblem thing ? Have the two of you figured out what he meant by that yet ?”

Hilda simply shook her head, and there was an awkward little pause where they both waited for Lysithea to add her input, only to realise she was fully absorbed in trying to drink as much as possible without burning herself. Upon realising they were waiting for her, her eyes widened, and she tried to play it cool. It only elicited one of Hilda’s “that’s adorable” looks, meaning she was most likely destined to a future as a dress-up doll.

“… Ahem. No, I’ve quickly turned over our textbooks, and could not find any reference to a Fire Emblem. Where did you hear the term before ?” admitted Lysithea, frustration creeping in her voice towards the end.

“Nowhere !” he brightly answered, enjoying the growing irritation on his younger classmate’s face. She was just so fun to tease ! “Unlike you, however, I chose to account for something the Prof mentioned. When he was talking about that goddess, he said that there were lots of different names for her because languages had changed a lot, right ? So I figured, if there’s no Fire Emblem here, that means it must be called something else. And what do we have that’s really, really important and is quite literally an Emblem of Fire ?” he asked them, waiting for the inevitable realisation to hit them.

Lysithea got it first.

“The Crest of Flames…” she whispered, gobsmacked.

“Got it in one ! And to put it in his words, when you think about it, isn’t the Crest of Flames really a fragment of divine power sealed within a human, according to the scripture ?” he smiled, showing teeth.

“… Well, at least I can see now why he didn’t want to say it out loud,” admitted Hilda. “And why you waited before sharing,” she grudgingly added. “That’s a one-way ticket to some major trouble… I mean, considering what he said, it’s not like it goes _against_ what the Church says… I think. But that’s a little too close to heresy for my comfort.”

“Let it never be known I don’t watch out for my fawns, hmm ?” he ribbed her playfully.

“If the Goddess named her Crest after something like that, then does that mean she took inspiration ?…” muttered Lysithea, off into that happy place she went to whenever pondering challenging subjects.

He heavily disliked the worried cast to Hilda’s face, however.

“Ehrm… Claude,” she began hesitantly. “I mean, we didn’t figure there was anything quite like that in what he said, and Lorenz was really annoyed, so…” she trailed off, but it was enough for him to pick up where that was headed.

“He told Seteth, didn’t he ?”

“… Yep.”

He took a second to mull it over.

“Well, I wish he’d thought a bit more beforehand, but, well, it’s Lorenz,” he sighed. “Robin seemed to be aware that he was gonna get into hot water with Rhea for that one, so luckily he shouldn’t get into too much trouble for it.”

* * *

Yuri shot a skeptical look at Father Aelfric as they heard the sounds of stone collapsing amidst several explosions deeper in the tunnels.

“And you’re sure that everything is normal ?”

“I had my doubts too, but the Archbishop’s advisor assured me that everything was fine and that this was just an enthusiastic spar between two members of the faculty.”

“… Think I can spar with them ?” suggested Balthus with a wolfish grin.

“No,” the priest laughed off in the face of the brawler’s enthusiasm. “I’m afraid Seteth was quite adamant on the matter.”

Another explosion, louder than the previous one, reached their ears.

“Then again,” admitted Father Aelfric, “it might be for the better.”

* * *

“Please tell me Lorenz at least didn’t rant about rude commoners,” he begged.

There was an embarassed silence as Hilda refused to meet his eyes.

“Well, if you don’t want to hear it…” offered Lysithea.

“… He does realise that the guy is apparently going to marry into a literal royal family ?” he asked. “Besides, this is just what I picked up from stuff Lucina let slip when I first met them, but it seems like he was from some kind of noble house from Plegia — that’s his home country, by the way — before he abandoned the name. And Anna said earlier today after he left that apparently his personal student is the current princess and regent of Plegia. I mean, he sounds like a bigger deal than literally all of us here except the Archbishop and maybe Dimitri and her Imperialness over at the Eagles.”

“Well, you’re not wrong, but you’re welcome to be the one to try and reason with him,” offered Hilda, who gave a small laugh at his mock shiver of horror. “Who’s that Anna by the way ? That’s twice you mentioned her,” she added. “Have you got yourself a little sweetheart on the side, Claude ? How scandalous !”

He was surprised to find himself give an honest laugh at the flash of impishness in her eyes, and Lysithea’s good-natured scoff. He was genuinely comfortable right now. Perhaps he really had needed to relax.

“Now, Hilda dear, you know you’re the only one for me,” he countered with a roguish smile. “She’s just my local supplier for some of my more… esoteric purchases, and she’s also an acquaintance of the professors. She was actually their in into Garreg Mach.”

“Hmm, words are cheap, Claude, but if you keep sweet-talking me, I’ll have to start expecting candlelit dinners and expensive gifts, you know ! But I suppose I’ll believe you this once.” she pretended to magnanimously forgive him, though he didn’t miss how she eagerly stored that little tidbit of information away.

“You know,” he added, sensing an opportunity to exploit her gossipy nature to get his final question of the day answered, “I did learn another couple of interesting things today.”

“Oh ?” she followed suit, sensing she was being baited but unable to resist the curiosity.

“Well, this one might be of more interest to you, Little Lys,” he hinted, ignoring her obligatory outrage at the nickname, “but he’s apparently a mage more than a swordsman, and considering Petra said he was at least a very good swordsman, I’d wager he’s not a bad one at all.”

“Really ?” she asked, unable to resist the lure of a potential source of information on magical theory that might even know whole different schools of thought.

“Yep. A Reason specialist, I’d imagine, considering he seems really knowledgeable about Dark Magic but apparently really dislikes it. Which reminds me, is purging poison a common Reason trick ?”

“Not that I’ve ever heard of,” she admitted, face scrunching up pensively. “I imagine it’s simple enough with Faith, but to do so with Black or Dark magic would at least require inner mana manipulation, notwithstanding whatever the complexity of the spell matrix is and that’s… beyond my capacities,” she admitted, and Claude was impressed despite himself.

He was no scholar when it came to magic, but even he’d picked up that Lysithea was a complete magical and intellectual prodigy. If something was beyond her reach, for reasons other than that she simply hadn’t had the time to get to it yet, chances are it was probably pretty complex.

“Yeah, that’s about what I figured. Well, he can do it, and that’s the only thing I know about what he can do for sure, so make of that what you will. On that same subject, it’s apparently mostly useless, because he’s apparently got an enhanced body constitution of some kind ? Anna hinted there was some bullshit going on there,” he offered, and watched Lysithea carefully out of the corner of his eye, as he refilled their cups.

And there was the slight tensing of the shoulders he was watching out for. 

He’d thrown that one out like a fisherman in a still pond, expecting nothing, but still figuring he might as well, on the off chance he was correct. He was very much vindicated.

Ever since he’d seen her small bout of near-panic at the comment about white-haired people during the lecture, he’d figured there was something there. Because Robin had white hair too, and he was nothing if not shady. And in the meantime, he’d learned that his teacher was apparently a possible magical prodigy and that something was up with his body.

It hadn’t escaped him that Lysithea also had a peculiar body condition, if of another kind. He hadn’t missed her struggle to maintain her breath during combat exercises, her bouts of wooziness, the way her voice would sometimes grow faint when she overexerted herself. She was weak in a way that bookishness alone could not explain.

Maybe he was wrong, and there was nothing there, but he could now visibly see that Lysithea thought there was something up too.

And another thing, perhaps the most important one he’d learned, was that Robin was not above seeding his lessons with hidden messages for certain people. He’d managed to lay a puzzle for him and invite him to come see him after hours with no one (including himself) the wiser. 

Could it be possible that he’d made an open-ended comment about white hair without an ulterior meaning ? Yes. Could he be sure ? No.

He finished adding the third spoonful of honey to Lysithea’s cup and handed it back to her, and she took it back distractedly, still deep in thought.

She breathed it in, and allowed herself a sip, relaxing at the sweet taste.

“That’s about all I managed to pry out of him, though,” he confessed, tone politely contrite.

“Well, that’s too bad, but I suppose that’s already something…” answered Lysithea, head still elsewhere, shoulders sagging a little, having no doubt hoped for more details to help her figure out what to do with her suspicions.

“I’m sorry,” he began, tone impossibly calm and casual, lifted straight from his earlier encounter. Hilda noticed, of course, but not fast enough to stop him. “I guess you wanted to know if he knew about your hair and condition ?”

“Yes, I…” she began, before her visage just… decomposed into naked horror, staring at him in utter betrayal as whatever she was about to say caught in her mouth.

Damn, he’d not expected this to be that important. Abort — wait, no, too late for that, just… steer this into another, less ominous direction.

“For what it’s worth, he probably knows something, and you should definitely ask him,” he tried, doing his best to ignore the death glare Hilda was sending his way.

She’d obviously realised she was missing some details, but she looked as if she’d figured out enough to know she should be pissed at him.

He was just expecting some kind of birth illness, not… whatever this was !

“How ?” was all Lysithea asked him, and he hated the open distrust that now reigned in her face.

“Hey, I don’t actually know anything ! It’s just that I noticed that little tidbit he dropped in class about the hair, and thought your reaction was weird, and then I thought ‘hey that guy too has white hair and is potentially a magical prodigy and there’s something going on with his body that’s not entirely normal’ and when I mentioned it you did that thing where you got all nervous again, so I figured I’d try ! I didn’t think it was something that’d upset you that much!”

Lysithea just eyed him distrustfully.

“Claude,” Hilda added flatly. “What the hell ?”

“… I mean I did _literally_ warn you both that he got me to spill all my secrets by answering my questions honestly and giving me tea right before I did the exact same to you guys ?” he tried, but something told him that was not the kind of answer that would endear him to them.

It did, however, accomplish its other intended goal, which was to defuse the situation slightly, as both of them, while far from calm, seemed to slowly transit to a familiar brand of exasperation. He wasn’t lying : he’d told them upfront what he was doing. They’d just decided to take his comment about not being as good as Robin at this to mean he wasn’t doing it. Hardly his fault.

“If it makes you feel better, I only know there’s a secret there somewhere. I spilled enough that he can break me, probably all of the von Riegan family and possibly the Alliance itself on the back of that if he exploits it well, so at least there’s that ?” he tried once again, and this one did better, if only through sheer shock value.

“… What did you even tell him ?” Lysithea asked almost despite herself.

“Believe it or not, just two words. They were enough to give him one half of what I didn’t want him to know, and from there he just instantly worked out about forty percent more. As I said, it was embarrassing. Also, slightly scary. I meant it when I said he was much better at this than me.”

“Speaking of,” Hilda picked up, “why would you even do this Claude ?”

“Well, would you have told me if I asked nicely out of nowhere ? Or let slip literally anything ?” he challenged Lysithea. It was a terrible point, and he knew it, but it wasn’t entirely wrong either, if immensely hypocritical coming from him.

That latter part was lost on absolutely no one within the room. Hilda’s flat stare in particular was very unimpressed. Which meant he needed to find a way to spin this so that—

Except no. Hilda gave as good as she got in this, and Lysithea was plenty clever. But more importantly, he’d only been here for two weeks and he’d already gotten an object demonstration of the fact that the way he was currently operating was simply not sustainable right now, let alone for a full year. Hilda was basically already lined up to be his lieutenant in all but name, a responsibility she’d probably offload to Lorenz on paper, and Lysithea had a ridiculously keen mind and was full of useful insights. He was going to have to work closely with them for a whole year, and possibly longer than that in their futures as Alliance leaders.

And he liked their company, he had to admit. He’d been enjoying tonight. Not enough to trust them with the big secrets, certainly, but… perhaps with a little vulnerability.

“Also,” he spoke in the silence that had been building up since his questions, “I don’t know how ?”

“… You what ?” was Lysithea’s uncharacteristically less-than-eloquent response.

“I didn’t know how to ask you without tricking you into saying it, okay ? In my experience noble scions don’t exactly… give away stuff like that for nothing,” he added, feeling embarrassment burning up a little.

“Claude,” Hilda began, very quietly, but he was very uncomfortable with the glimmer of glee in her eyes, “are you telling me that you don’t know how friends work ?”

No, this had been a silly idea. Cancel everything.

* * *

“Now that I think about it, this would traditionally be the point where we recognise each other’s worth and become friends or something, but I’m really not feeling it,” Robin complained.

“I can assure you that the feeling is very much shared,” bit back Rhea, although the venom in her voice had completely vanished.

“Ah, thanks, tiny dragon person,” Robin told mini-Seteth as she finished healing up the massive gash on his chest. “It’s good to see that the time-honoured tradition of the children being the reasonable ones is maintained amongst all dragon-kin. Also we’ve never been actually introduced because I’m pretty sure Seteth hid you away from me, but I’m Robin.”

The young healer had joined them at… some point towards the end of the spar, he’d been too busy avoiding getting stabbed after Rhea finally figured out she had the upper hand in melee to notice — at least until he’d pulled out one of the tricks he’d been wanting to keep under his sleeves, and she’d discovered his sword was actually a Levin sword.

See if she would taunt him again when he could throw point-blank lightning bolts. Ha !

“Robin,” groaned Lucina, “you know a single dragon under a thousand years old. That does not make a tradition. And do not be rude to our healer,” she tutted in addition, thanks to no doubt years of conditioning by her aunt and, worse, Maribelle. 

Fredrick as physical instructor, he could forgive Chrom for. It was cruel, it was mad, but it was well-intentioned, and on a fundamental level he hadn’t done a bad job training Chrom. But there was no excuse for having Maribelle be Lucina’s etiquette teacher. No one deserved that, and _he_ certainly didn’t deserve second-hand suffering for it.

“Well it’s either that or the fact Nah’s half-human, so take your pick,” he suggested, noting with interest the surprise on the other three’s faces at the mention of half-humans. “I swear for all that the girl tries to pretend she’s all serious, give her a couple of hundred years and she’ll be just like her mother. Thank Naga Donnel has got a head on his shoulders at least, it should buy us a few decades of tranquility.”

“… Robin, Sir Donnel used to go into battle wearing a cooking pot on his head as a helmet.”

“And he’s still arguably the most sensible of the Shepherds, which should really tell you something. I mean I guess Ricken’s reasonable enough too, but he willingly asked Maribelle to marry him so there has to be something off there. Hey, how come the two most normal people of our entire lot were the two youngest anyway ?”

A few seconds of silence followed, where Lucina tried to pretend she was offended but could not help the little snicker that escaped her, and the dragonkin politely pretended they weren’t listening, until the kid one couldn’t resist. What was her name again ? He might have had a small concussion when they told him. He wasn’t entirely sure it’d gone away quite yet, either.

“… Excuse me, but… A cooking pot ?” Flayn (that was it !) asked.

“Well, long story short, when Donny joined us he was just a farmer’s boy and we were in a hurry, so we didn’t exactly have the time to fit him for armour or stop by the barracks. So we just slapped whatever we had on hand and made it work. Except that cooking pot sort of became a running joke, and then his trademark, and by the time he was a full-fledged knight everyone thought it was hilarious and he’d grown fond of the thing so he just refused to trade it off for an actual helmet.”

A moment of disbelieving confusion followed his explanation.

“That sounds… unprofessional,” Seteth diplomatically suggested, looking for all the world like he was greatly regretting letting him in the presence of his daughter (because knowing what he did about dragon maturing speeds, there was no way he didn’t have a few thousand years on his “sister”).

“Once, we were on a diplomatic mission to a country called Regna Ferox and Khan Flavia asked Prince Chrom why he hired his bodyguards from a traveling circus. I honestly can’t fault her for it,” he admitted. “I mean, we’d just won this fighting tournament by completely wiping out Lucina, who was competing for the other side because the whole thing was rigged so that Ylisse would win either way—”

“You did not _wipe me out_ !” she attempted to object.

“We defeated all your team and then Chrom literally took you on in single combat while we just stood there and watched and he beat you anyway. If that’s not wiping out, I don’t know what is,” he waved away, knowing he would pay for it later but unable to resist. “Anyway, to celebrate, there was this big banquet, with a lot of alcohol, except Feroxi root liquor is much stronger than what we were all expecting. So here we all were, Ylisse’s most elite cadre of knights, drunk off our tits on this very official mission.

“Chrom himself had decided to try and arm-wrestle everyone in sight, except that he’s way too strong and kept breaking tables. Princess Lissa was basically throwing herself at Khan Basilio’s bodyguard while drunkenly muttering about abs. Frederick was desperately trying to stop her from doing so, but she kept ordering him to let her go and he could not compute the dilemma. Sully challenged anyone around her to a drinking contest, and then used the passed out bodies of her challengers as a throne until she finally fell asleep. She spent the night on top of them. Virion kept trying to hit on General Raimi until she punched him into a wall and knocked him out. Miriel decided that since root liquor was so strong in alcohol, it would be interesting to experiment on its flammability and lit a corner of the dining hall on fire. No one noticed Kellam trying to contain the fire, and when people ran away from it they kept running straight into his massive armour and falling over, creating more panic. Sumia, that is current Queen of Ylisse Sumia, insisted she needed to talk to Chrom about something very important, except that she could not remember what it was and kept tripping over herself on the way there, until eventually she just fell over, curled into a ball in the middle of the room and announced that since she was so useless there was no point to it all.”

Silence followed.

“Look, all I’m saying is that we never exactly set the standard for professionalism outside the job. Need us to take on a million-strong army ? No problem. Want us for literally anything else ? Not a great idea.”

“This explains a lot about your work ethic,” Rhea admitted.

“Hey, it works,” he just shrugged.

“… I never heard about this,” Lucina accused him.

“Your father forbid us from bringing it up because he was ashamed Flavia beat him seventeen times in a row at arm wrestling and he stormed off in a huff. Your aunt also still can barely look at Lon’qu without feeling mortified, and he’s still terrified of her. To top it off, your mother swore off alcohol entirely after that, until we finally got to her and Cordelia. So all of us just never really mentioned it again. Sully still boasts about it when they can’t hear, though. If you’d stayed instead of running off in a huff as soon as you lost you’d have known it,” he offered. “Like father, like daughter,” he added, physically incapable of resisting the opportunity to taunt both her and Chrom.

“I was not in a _huff_! I simply had… pressing matters to attend to.”

“Is that what you call sulking now ?”

To their surprise, a snort interrupted their little argument, before Flayn finally gave up and erupted into full-blown laughter, in front of a Seteth who was wearing a truly indescribable expression, quickly cycling between gladness, concern, disbelief, amusement and irritation in impressive facial patterns.

Well, goal accomplished. That probably counted as sufficiently diffusing the situation, right ?

* * *

Hilda was the first to realise how late it’d gotten and to bow out of their little gathering, and Claude was glad to have a respite from the teasing. Oh, he’d find a way to get back at her for it, but right now he just really needed some rest after today.

Except Lysithea was still here, and seemed hesitant to leave.

Time to be the house leader again, then.

“What’s up, Little Lys ?” he asked, hoping that poking fun at her would at least snap her out of her thoughts.

No dice. She did look up at him, but still seemed to be thinking very carefully about what to say.

“… Claude, do you really think I should talk to professor Robin about…”

He let her trail off, but it didn’t seem like she was intent on picking up her train of thought there. Well, so much for his curiosity. Time to do the right thing.

“… I can’t tell you, Lys. I don’t know what that secret of yours is,” he began, before realising how ominous his words sounded when her eyes widened, “and I won’t ask you, but all I can tell you is that I don’t think he made that comment randomly, and I don’t think he means you any harm.

“I mean, think about it this way : the man has been around Fódlan for months now, yet he’s been sitting on knowledge that could cause a heretical uprising. I’m pretty sure that even beyond that he’s got some kind on dirt on the Archbishop herself, and mostly convinced that he’s somehow also picked up something about Edelgard and Hubert. If you look at it carefully, between that and what he has on me, with a few well-redacted letters and a handful of choice conversations he could completely upset Fódlani politics, and instead he’s just here teaching kids, getting drunk with merchants and giving Seteth the runaround.”

He paused, frustrated at himself. He wasn’t making his point very well.

“All I’m saying is, he’s definitely seven sorts of shady but not _that_ kind of shady. I just think he enjoys knowing for the sake of knowing and feeling smarter than everyone else in the room. And more importantly, I think he genuinely enjoys teaching, so I reckon that if there’s something you should know about… whatever this is, he’d probably tell you. So there’s my answer.

“He’s definitely got multiple horses in this race, somehow, but that doesn’t mean he’s out to screw you over. Just that you got to keep in mind that he’s the type to always accomplish multiple objectives with a single action. It’s up to you whether that has to be a dealbreaker or not.That work for you ?”

She mulled his words over, still looking unsure but not quite as restless.

“I suppose. That was… surprisingly mature of you, Claude. I’m impressed,” and though she tried for a teasing lilt there, it was more genuine than he expected.

“Well, I do try,” he offered with a comforting smile.

She returned it, and he allowed himself to bask in the simple of comfort of friendship for an instant.

Until she broke it with a little yawn that, no matter how desperately she tried to play it off, undeniably sounded like a small kitten.

“I suppose it’s getting past your bedtime, isn’t it ?” he teased, getting up and leading her to the door.

“I am not a child ! Will you stop this ?”

“Nope !” he happily answered, opening the door.

As she stepped out, grumbling, there was a lingering moment of awkwardness when she remained at the foot his door.

“… Thank you, Claude.” she muttered, almost beneath her breath.

“You’re welcome, Little Lys. Have to be the house leader once in a while, don’t I ?” he winked at her.

“… Ergh. Good night, von Riegan,” she huffed as she left, but he could hear the little smile in that.

How wholesome.

… Aaah, but he really wanted to know what this was all about !

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this was never going to be the big Rhea and Robin showdown, more of a teaser of where the friction between them stems from and more importantly of how they will manage to deal with coexisting for the next few months, until the current status quo can't be maintained.
> 
> With a cameo from the Ashen Wolves, because while I don't think I'll successfully manage to find them a meaningful role within the story without bloating the word count even more, at least they can get guest appearances. They'll be around, just... Not as much.
> 
> I wanted this chapter to be about a group of grown-ass adults learning to get along the way only five-year olds can, and about a group of teenagers trying to bumble their way into mature communication. I hope that worked out alright. More importantly, with this we've officially set the three House leaders' core conflicts, the Rhea/Robin dynamics and we can finally get the plot running ! It's not like we're already 60k words in or anything. I swear I'll look back at this in a few months and wonder how the hell I didn't manage to do this some thirty-thousand words earlier, but, well, that's what I get for speeding through this.
> 
> Which reminds me, word of warning : update pace is definitely going to slow down for the next couple of chapters as a couple of IRL issues are going to take priority. It's not going to be a huge delay, but it'll be there.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this one took a long while, huh ? It's been a mix of work sapping a lot of creative energy, because I spend most of my day typing in front of a screen and I don't really want to do more of that when I'm done, but mostly it took *this* long because I was deeply unhappy with this chapter, and with some aspects of the previous one, and after month of painfully rewriting chunks of thousands of words at a time, I realised that it was either going to be moving on with a mediocre chapter or rewriting the entire last four chapters at least. So here is chap 8, and I apologise in advance because it feels like the worst one since chap 1, but at least we can move on now !
> 
> Fair warning, there are probably quite a few typos in this, because I have spent so long staring at this chapter I can't even see the letters anymore and I'm honestly quite done rereading it. Apologies if there's naything particularly egregious there.

The best word Felix could find to describe his current state was “buzzing”. Buzzing with what, he couldn’t say. Anger, most definitely, on the back of his previous interaction with professor Lucina. Spite, too, animated as he was by the desire to prove he was better than she thought. Excitement, at the opportunity to get tutoring from a master swordswoman. 

(A little fear too, though he certainly wasn’t acknowledging it.)

He’d intended to begin yesterday, as soon as possible, but when he’d turned up to their instructor’s office to put his name down earlier this week had found out that due to her not being available in the morning and having her group session with the Eagles in the afternoon, there were only three spots available for Monday tutoring. He was the fourth to turn up.

Unsurprisingly, Petra and Leonie had taken up the first two spots, with the first having unofficially claimed the position of Lucina’s apprentice even prior to her official hiring, and the second having immediately taken to her, even if Captain Jeralt’s arrival had more obviously obnubilated her since. What he’d not expected, however, was Ingrid beating him to it — if only because while she was an early riser, she was also extremely schedule-oriented, and unlikely to deviate from it. He’d arrived at least a good half-hour before she’d normally get out of her room.

He supposed she was also impressed by her little displays, just like the Boar had been. Whatever. He just wanted to prove to himself (and to Lucina) that he was better than this.

He made his way into the yard early, and found himself alone and a little disappointed. He didn’t know why he’d expected her to be there, keen and early, but he had. Instead, he started limbering up and running through drills, careful not to tire himself out. He wanted to conserve his full energy for the coming hour.

The bell struck the hour, and she arrived just on the back of it, striding into the courtyard and greeting him with a simple nod.

“Felix. Good to see you are on time.”

She took a quick moment to assess his practice as he grunted out a reply, before nodding to herself.

“Seeing as you are already warmed up, perhaps I should start a bit differently. Our previous bout was a poor opportunity to showcase your skills, so why not spar with me a little to begin with, that I may get a better idea of where you stand and what you seek ?”

Perfect.

“Fine by me.”

And without another word, they both took position in the centre of the yard after grabbing a couple of training swords. He sized her up briefly, looking for openings, but found nothing exploitable in her stance. Once again, he was instead struck by how solid she looked in her stance, looking for all the world like an inevitable truth of the world in her stillness.

But now was not the time to admire her anymore.

“Begin,” was all she said, and before she’d finished the word he was darting towards her.

After his last showing, he’d instinctively discarded attempting to triumph through strength alone. If the Boar himself could try and fail, he would find no purchase there. Instead, he did his best to simplify his offence, understanding instinctively that she’d have the better of him when it came to skill alone too. Strike fast, strike true, and leave no openings. 

Trying to gauge her response time, he went for the fastest strike he could from his starting position, a diagonal slash meant to test her more than threaten. She impeccably caught it and deflected, and he’d already retreated when the tip of her blade darted forward and stopped inches away from his chest.

Fast enough then.

Their first few exchanges continued in this tame fashion, as he struck hard and fast at precise points to get a handle on her movements and reflexes, never committing in order not to get caught by the swift, inevitable counter.

She let him dictate the pace, content to remain on the defensive, no doubt knowing that breaking this status quo was on his shoulders.

So he tried.

A slash, caught — step inside left to avoid the counter-stab, bring back his sword to catch her follow-up slash just over his pommel and redirect it downwards. Use the motion as the beginning of a circular set up for an upwards strike, slightly slower but he would need the added power to sell the threat. Watch her take a step back, follow to stay inside her range, bring guard back down to prevent her from trying to reclaim the mid-range, dart to her left again to avoid being pushed aside, slash — caught again, step left to barely avoid counter-stab again, raise blade to the right and power through it to catch her off-guard, succeed — too much, step back in before she puts space back between them again catch her strike, get pushed to the left you’re moving in circles around her losing control of the tempo surge forward before —

A sharp stinging pain bloomed on his right cheek as her practice sword slapped him in the face, punishing his reckless approach, and he buried his wounded pride deep inside as he raised up his head, looking at his instructor’s blank face.

“Again,” was all she had to say.

So again he went.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, they finally broke for rest and a drink, and he had no problem silencing the tattered remains of his pride as he bent over in two, taking deep heavy breaths with little regard for propriety — not that he’d been known for much of that.

Lucina, who seemed far less winded than him, allowed herself a quick drink, before nodding at him.

“You seem to me the kind of individual who appreciates, straightforwardness, so I shall not mince words,” she began, and at her pause he gave the tiniest of nods. It was about the most effort he could manage at the moment, and talking would have wasted valuable time he could spend breathing. “You must take care of that tunnel vision of yours before it gets you or one of your comrades killed. Anger and frustration can be useful tools when properly channeled, but you are simply allowing yours to obscure your mind.”

She gauged him for a second, looking him up and down.

“That would perhaps be no problem if you were an instinctual fighter, but you seem to me someone who plans his actions more meticulously than the average Berserker.”

He gave her a grunt that was half-confirmation, half-confusion at what a Berserker might be. Thankfully, she seemed to understand his silent question.

“Ah — my apologies, I had not thought that they might not be known. Simply put, they are fierce warriors trained to let their anger take over and act on instinct during a fight. They are excellent shock troops, and can be troublesome opponents for one unaccustomed to fighting… wilder adversaries. Plegian infantry was known to make great use of them.”

While that sounded like a very interesting fight, he gave another grunt, hoping it would express his desire to hear her feedback accurately enough.

His breath was coming back now. Next time, he might even manage to speak.

“Forgive me, I am meandering. You must learn to either stop taking every failure as a personal affront, or learn to channel that frustration into energy. Otherwise, you will never triumph against superior opponents — or perhaps even your equals.

“Do not misunderstand me — your swordsmanship is the most skilled out of all the students that I have witnessed so far, and there are few ahead of you when it comes to sheer capacity in a fight. But so long as you are unable to temper this, when it comes to war and to battles, you are more likely to find yourself a liability than an asset.”

He grit his teeth, but said nothing. There was nothing to say. She was right. As he’d handily demonstrated to her for the past twenty minutes.

Every time he tried to mount an offence, to plan an attack, and she failed to be caught, he grew reckless out of frustration and eventually fell for a counter.

“However, while fixing this issue should always be on your mind, it is not the most glaring flaw in your swordsmanship.”

That, however, froze him right in his tracks.

“… What do you mean ?” he growled out, barely bothering with the thinnest veneer of politeness.

“Your lack of self-control is not an issue with your swordsmanship. It is an issue with the whole of your being. It is the reason you grow worse as the fight wears on, but it is not the reason why you struggle in the first place.”

He finally raised his head, intent on requesting she quickly clarify what she meant, but his mouth instead fell shut as his gaze met his instructors. In that particular moment, as she kept her face blank and stared him down with an authority he’d scarcely seen before, he had no trouble believing she was, as she had claimed, the princess of a foreign land.

“There is no thought behind your sword,” she intoned, because this was not a question, but a declaration from on high. “You have a clear drive to become stronger, but what for ? And how ? What is your swordsmanship ? What drew you to the blade ? Which aspects do you want to improve ? How do you want to fight your enemies ?

“Those amongst swordsmen who will tell you that philosophy and bladework go hand in hand, as is often the wont of the poorer Chon’sin Swordmasters and other narrow-minded fools, are charlatans, but that need not mean that one can effectively fight while devoid of beliefs and principles.”

The words let him draw effortlessly from the pit of rancour which had formed all these years ago with Glenn’s death.

“… I thought you were different,” he spat out. “I should have known you’d be one of those chivalrous types.”

“I am the bearer of the Falchion,” was all she answered, which did nothing to actually tell him anything. “I can be no less.”

Thankfully, after a short awkward silence, she decided to expand. 

“That need not mean I fight for my own petty honour and satisfaction. I am a warrior. I fight to bring swift and decisive death to my opponents. I fight to preserve the life of my comrades and of my people both. I fight for the right to exist in this world. That is what my swordsmanship reflects : I favour speed, skill and precision, and will always seek advantageous positions from which to strike. I will always prefer seeking the initiative to being on the defensive. I will always make sure not to get locked down with a single opponent and always remain ready to disengage. I will not falter facing insurmountable odds, but I will not seek them out either. The reasons for which I fight inform the way I choose to do so.”

She let another silence linger, and Felix realised he would not avoid answering her.

“… I do not care for beauty, presentation or honour, for aesthetics or fairness. I want to become as strong a swordsman as I can be, pride be damned.”

“Then you are either delusional, or must start living that belief in truth,” was her instant, brutal rebuttal. 

As he was about to lash out angrily at her, she simply raised her hand and stared him down. He hated how easily she could cow him.

“I am not best suited to explaining this to you — as is anyone, I would wager. It is a truth best understood by oneself. During this week, you will seek out Robin and professor Eisner and request to spar with them. When you are done with this, you will come back, and we shall discuss what you have seen.”

“… Why these two ? Robin is a mage,” he asks.

“Many thought like you, and tried to charge him in the heat of battle. They are dead, one and all. You will understand when you fight him. Or you will not, I suppose, but you would considerably disappoint me if you drew no insights from such a fight.”

He kept staring at her, however, until she finally deigned to offer him a small bone.

“Byleth Eisner’s swordsmanship is the epitome of practicality. It is a tool entirely subordinated to her objective of being a consummate mercenary. If you want to witness what someone who seeks raw mastery over pure form for the sake of pragmatism might achieve in their swordsmanship, she is the one to seek out.

“Robin… will do what it takes to win. You might think yourself ready to discard pride and honour, but you do not yet understand what desperation looks like, nor can I see you attempting underhanded tricks when any other option is available.”

As he was about to question further, she silenced him again with a glare that brooked no further questioning.

“I will speak no further on the subject. Seek them out, and find the answers for yourself. For now,” she added, “we have half an hour yet left. Until you have made your decision, I can at the very least instruct you on matters of pure form.”

He considered protesting further, but in the end, pragmatism won over indignation. He had come here for instruction — better not waste precious tutoring time on arguing.

No matter how dearly he might want to.

* * *

“So, who’s up for a little heresy ?”

As the shocked gasps resonated within the room (and that purple-haired girl… fainted ?), Robin made extra sure to give Edelgard a cocky smirk, thoroughly enjoying the thunderous cast it brought to Hubert’s features and the Imperial princess’s attempt at maintaining a suitably-offended-yet-blank face, despite the numerous complex emotions he could see flashing through her eyes.

Serves them right for going overboard. He might have acted like everything was fine in front of Lucina (or at least he was fairly sure he did — the memories were a bit hazy, thanks to the alcohol), but he was a little unsettled with how… _swiftly_ they’d apparently taken his words to heart, and how exactly they chose to interpret them.

As he picked up his lecture, quieting the hubbub, he started doodling a quick note for the Empress-to-be. He was originally going to wait until their scheduled meeting, but there was little harm in bringing this forward. Looking at them, he found himself a little uneasy at the idea of just letting this all be.

* * *

“You’ve improved ! Your footwork is much less hesitant than before, and you’ve begun to let your limbs loosen up a little !”

“Thank you, Dorothea. I am… still being not very fond of courtly arts but dancing with you has been… fun,” Petra smiled back, as they both disengaged and took a moment to breathe.

As the last few days had shown, she had severely underestimated the amount of physical effort that went into skilled dancing. Nonetheless, despite the early cramps and frustrations, she could already feel a certain added… smoothness to her moments. Or perhaps moreso a lack of stiffness ? It was still only little things, things she would scarcely notice were she not paying attention — the way she would pull out her chair, stand up and turn around in a single action, how she’d begin stepping in while opening a door rather than separate the two — but they were signs that she was gradually learning to instinctively force her body to execute parallel actions where before she would have used a succession of single tasks. As their infuriating teacher (and apparently fellow “heretic” to Fódlani sensibilities, because _that_ had been an interesting lesson and a half) had predicted, the dancing was all bout improving the flow of her body.

And, on top of its benefits, it had introduced her to Dorothea, who had proven herself very pleasant company for a lonely Brigidian, as a fellow outcast in her own way.

“Well, now that we’ve gotten to your footwork a bit,” began said songstress anew, as they set themselves back into position and her hand found a place just above her waist, sparking that teasing, devilish glint in her eye, “let’s see if I can finally get you to move those hips a little !”

The embarrassing squeal she let loose, however, reminded her that there were _some_ aspects of Dorothea’s personality that were easier to bear with than others.

* * *

“So, who’s up for a little heresy ?”

Well, the immediate outrage wasn’t quite what he’d expected, but then again they did all come from a place called the _Holy_ Kingdom of Faerghus. Urgh, Naga save him from zealots, what did Lucina see in the cubs ?

Well, no, that was uncharitable, quite a few were pretty interesting, but he had enough of herding chivalrous types at home.

“Alright, quiet up you lot,” he yelled over the hubbub and Dimitri’s politely embarrassed insistence he explain himself. “And you better listen, because you’re _clearly_ not ready to hear that lesson otherwise.”

* * *

“Are you sure you do not wish to take any kind of melee weapon ?”

“No offence, Teach, but as an archer, if I’ve let you close enough for it to matter, I’ve already lost,” Claude replied in a lackadaisical manner, though the way he ran his fingers along an arrow’s shaft belied his readiness. He wouldn’t be caught underestimating the foreign warrior — he’d already assumed he’d accounted for the brunt of her capacities in their group session, and been thoroughly chastened.

At least they’d done better than the Eagles and the Lions.

“And yet it seems you do have something to learn from me already — you have an archer’s arrogance.”

“Oh ? How so ?”

Without another word, she simply hefted her training lance, and in one smooth motion, sent it sailing towards him, and only his prior alert state let him dodge it in time.

“You assume that because you have more range, you are the only one capable of striking at distance,” she commented, idly adjusting the straps on her vambraces, as though this was an entirely reasonable occurrence. “It may not be the optimal instrument, but any lance is a javelin, if thrown hard enough. Good work on dodging, however, you have excellent reflexes,” she absent-mindedly congratulated him.

He looked behind at the projectile, which had hit the wall with a resounding thud before crashing to the ground. There was a chip in the wall.

“… Point taken. Can I grab a training axe ?”

“Please.”

* * *

“What were you two _thinking_ ?” he lashed out as calmly as he could, which was much less than he’d assumed.

Not wanting to turn this into an angry dressing-down, he sighed and quickly massaged his temples, letting the most of his immediate annoyance filter out.

“With all due respect, professor, what are you referring to ?” chanced the Imperial princess, and he repressed his instinctive snappy comeback at her guarded face. He could see in her eyes she knew exactly what he was referring to, and yet she still felt obliged to try this.

“And might I suggest you address Lady Edelgard more politely ? If you carry on acting with such familiarity, your behaviour will have to be… corrected,” drawled her ever-present shadow.

“Alright, I wasn’t going to start with this, but first, this…” he began, struggling not to devolve into wordless babble, “whole _thing_ you have going on where you’re acting like the villain in a cheap two-bit play needs to stop. You’re barely a man grown. You have a pimple under your chin. You look like you haven’t seen the sun in three months and going for a run would kill you. _You’re not scary_. I get that being a dark mage creeps some people out, but you’re barely the fourth creepiest dark-mage-bodyguard-cum-advisor-to-royalty I know, and two of the top three work for me ! And, just so we’re clear, I killed the third one, who was a much better mage than you or I ; the dark magic notes I gave you last week come from her own personal tome. So _cool it_ _with the threats_ , am I clear ?”

He paused for breath, a little surprised at himself for how vehement that rebuke had ended up being. But then again, incompetence had always been his pet peeve, and now that he was getting a better handle on these two, Hubert was giving him some eerie vibes of what a Tharja raised at court might have ended up like. And for all her many, many… _many_ flaws, she was nothing if not competent.

He breathed out, his initial burst of ill feelings mostly spent, and tried to grab ahold of his carefree persona again.

“Also, consider dabbling into curses and hexes rather than straight up offensive magic. You’re too pale. You’re drawing on your lifeforce too regularly, it hasn’t got the time to fully replenish. Using physical reagents for curses and hexes should help you avoid overtaxing yourself,” he advised, making sure to sound as though his previous outburst was calculated in order to cow them and not just him losing his temper.

He… thought he’d succeeded ? They looked a little chastised, but mostly their faces were… worryingly closed. They hadn’t been that good at hiding their feelings when he was being more obtuse. Were they… used to being threatened ?

That couldn’t have been any good. In fact, it was somewhat discouraging. And worrying. And a few other adjectives in that vein.

It also implied that he’d read their situation at least partly wrong, and considering how he might have been treading on the edge a little when it came to them, that was no good.

“Look, kids, perhaps we can dispense with the whole facade of innocence thing ? I know that you orchestrated that little operation where you met Byleth and Jeralt. You know that I know this, because I lectured you about this a handful of days beforehand. And while I’m impressed at how swiftly you put this together, and at the sheer guts it must have taken you to be so brazen, I can’t let that sort of thing fly on my watch, you know ?”

“For someone who claimed to be unconcerned with anything besides teaching us, you certainly do appear to have your loyalties,” the von Vestra kid found nothing better to do than say, and he was going to remain calm and not blow out another fuse. 

Losing his temper had obviously not particularly helped, and he had a feeling he didn’t particularly want these two to put him on their list of enemies. They seemed to be the kind of people who would make that decision very much final.

“And for someone who plays at being a mastermind, you certainly can be dense, Hubert. First of all, never have I claimed that I was unconcerned with anything but teaching, mainly that it was my primary motivation in interacting with you two. More importantly, yes, I am a teacher. So what makes you think I would find it acceptable for you to risk the life of my other students in this little plot of yours ?”

There was a beat of silence, though not so much because they were surprised. Instead, it rather seemed like the little Empress was gearing herself up for a debate. Not what he’d expected, but more promising than it could otherwise have been.

“The situation was under control. The men were under strict orders to target me and me alone, and had professor Wulfric not suddenly ran away, the situation would have remained perfectly tenable for ourselves and the knights,” she declared, and inwardly he saluted her poise. 

Yes, she was a little green, but by Naga the girl had charisma in spades. Not like Chrom’s friendly, overt kind, but perhaps a little more like a sterner Tiki ? Perhaps a little like he imagined Gangrel once was, before being consumed by hate, when he was just a royal bastard with a chip in his shoulder seeking to unite a broken people in the aftermath of overwhelming defeat and ruin, and then to ready them for the Valmese threat ?

Or, a darker voice whispered, like the former king of the little kingdom of Valm, before he decided, starting from almost nothing, to bring the entire continent under his heel in a mad, almost successful bid to destroy the old order.

“Sure. And none of them could have been hit by a stray arrow at any time ? And those bandits were of course entirely loyal to you, and not merely bought off and then had the three most valuable political prisoners alive dangled in front of them ?”

“We had planned for —” she began, but he cut her off before she could build steam. She was dangerous, this one, he decided, still unsure where to fit her, or in what way exactly she might have been so.

“I’ve no doubt you planned this, but that is no guarantee of perfection. A plan is only as good as the people who made it, the time and resources invested into it, and the amount of effort one has to invest in relation to the expected outcome. You did this hurriedly, hired common bandits to thread a highly politically charged situation, and it all was for very little potential gain, despite the very high risk factor.

“Do you dispute that ?”

“I…” she began, but her mouth fell shut. Not out of shame, or overwhelming guilt, he thought, because that was too good a poker face on her considering what he’d seen earlier. And, more importantly, considering the quick side-eyed glance from Hubert. There must have been… another reason then ? One that he… honestly couldn’t figure out. Well, there were a myriad possibilities, but not any single one that jumped out at him.

The question was whether to push further, or leave it be for now and wait for a more opportune moment.

But no matter how much he twisted and turned the situation in his head, he couldn’t figure out a path to tripping her over that didn’t burn too many bridges, and his instincts suggested that he should tread a fine line with this one.

It didn’t mean, however, that he should let her leave with too much confidence.

“Hmm. You can go, then. I still expect to see you two on Friday.”

He let them head for the door, Hubert never taking his eyes off him and Edelgard striding towards the exit with renewed poise, and tried to wait for the exact moment when her back and shoulders had regained their proudest bearing, before asking one last question.

“Just before you leave, miss Hresvelg,” he interjected as she had already grabbed the handle. “One last question : the end, or the means ?”

There was a little silence, and another death glare from Hubert, as Edelgard slowly blinked.

“I beg your pardon ?”

“It’s a simple enough question, for an emperor. What matters most to a ruler ? The end, or the means ?”

She cast a piercing gaze at him, and right now he hated the little admiring voice in his head which nodded in approval. She did have the glare down pat, he had to admit. Not Rhea levels, but considering the age difference there…

“Sometimes,” she enunciated carefully, and it felt as though she was drawing down battle-lines, “a ruler must learn to harden their heart.”

Bollocks.

“… An Emperor-to-be, truly. Thank you.”

She seemed a bit nonplussed at his reaction, but was all too glad to leave, along with her second. Once the door was closed and he was sure he was alone, he let his head drop down into his hands and cradled it morosely.

“Fuck, I’m… going to need to see Rhea. Alright, how to spin that one ?…”

Bad memories all round, these types.

* * *

When she saw Robin approach, she almost instinctively threw a Fire spell at him. One day. They had barely reached a compromise of sorts one day ago, and he was already back to bother her !

Except this time was not quite the same — his step lacked its customary spring, and he’d dispensed with that exasperating fake smile of his.

Wonder of wonders, he even waited for her to be done with her current supplicant before stepping forward, looking… not quite grim, but certainly more dour than she’d grown used to.

“How unlike you to drop by unannounced, Professor. What urgent matter could have brought you here ?” she greeted him, not above a little pettiness — Goddess knew he’d all but asked for it.

He reflexively opened his mouth to protest, but seemed to think better of it and shook his head free of thoughts instead. Truly, her Mother worked the grandest of miracles.

“That’s… fair game. Mind if we take this to your office ? Got a couple of ideas I want to run past you.”

Truly, this was a day of wonders. Keeping her surprise off her face at the thought he’d actually bothered seeking her out for input instead of just doing whatever he wanted, she simply nodded and headed for her office, a little jubilant at his meeker demeanour, a little worried at what it might signify. She was fairly certain she hadn’t cowed him quite that effectively yesterday.

They got settled, and he paced around in front of her desk instead of plopping himself down into the chair as was his infuriating habit.

“So, what ideas have you so worried ?”

“How opposed would you be to me borrowing the house leaders once a week for a seminar ?” he suggested, clearly still incapable of going straight to the point.

“That would depend on your reason. Their time, however, is most valuable, and I would expect you to provide ample evidence that this would be necessary, both to persuade them to part with it and to assuage any who would accuse you of… overreaching your bounds, as it were.”

Left unsaid, of course, was that she was very much one of these. She’d allayed the worst of her suspicions regarding him, but he was still a self-declared asset of a foreign nation asking for even more significant access to the future of Fódlan than he already had.

“Well, officially, it strikes me that our current heirs all seemingly have… unique circumstances that significantly impact their ability to rule effectively. Prince Dimitri, from what I am given to understand, is so mired in guilt, self-loathing and hatred that he is both terrified and unwilling to exercise his authority. Claude as he currently acts is… more suited to be someone’s spymaster than a Duke. I’ve little insight into the Adrestian Court’s circumstances, but Edelgard seems to believe her reign will collapse the instant she shows a hint of vulnerability. They all concern me, to some degree,” he bluntly stated.

“Following the Insurrection of the Seven, Emperor Ionius IX gradually lost most of his effective power to his entourage. Duke Aegir, the Prime Minsister, all but runs the country nowadays. Combined with the Emperor’s reported frailty and the death of her ten siblings to ill health, I imagine she views it as her duty to reestablish imperial authority.

“I suppose it would be a laudable initiative,” she allowed. “You truly believe yourself qualified to administer lessons on rulership ? I was given to understand you were an advisor by nature.”

She decided to leave the fact this was an ‘official’ reason alone for now. The initiative, without whatever hidden motive was involved, was not without merit ; she could do with a generation of competent rulers not causing the Church any trouble. Better work out the little details before diving into the unsavoury part.

“I’ll have to share the teaching with Lucina, she’s got the whole exemplar part better than me. I have the mechanics down, she’s got the charisma to make it work. Might ask you to intervene as a guest lecturer once ? You have a couple of important traits down pat, I won’t lie. But beyond our familiarity with the act of rulership, between our travels, our wars, our friendships and our upbringings, Lucina and I have met a considerable amount of rulers. Some definitely better than others, but each with a style of their own, and what I can do is give examples, and work off those. That sounds productive enough ?” he enquired.

She took the time to gauge the idea carefully.

“The content would need… further development, and I will most likely be required to intervene to give more Fódlan-centric examples alone, it could not do for all your examples to be foreign, but with some work, I imagine I could authorise such an endeavour. The burden of convincing the house leaders would on you, though.”

“Alright, great, I can work with that,” he acquiesced, still pacing distractedly around the place. “I’ll throw in Petra too, she’s also a princess, and hopefully it’ll help muddy the waters a bit. Debates too. No, not debates, presentations ? Get the kids to give a summation of what, in their eyes, their country’s approach to rulership has been — not their own philosophy, they wouldn’t be comfortable with that, or maybe later ? But their forefathers should do the trick, they all have pride in their countries except Claude, so it’ll tickle that, I’ll work something out for him…” he trailed off, mind already going off on one of his tangents, though it lacked the intentionally irritating edge those usually had.

She’d had trouble reconciling the image of the stalwart military strategist and loyal retainer she’d been sold with her infuriating employee ever since Robin and Lucina had first sat down to tell their story, but she felt she was finally catching a glimpse of the real Robin now. Together with the insight into his character their fight had granted her, she couldn’t help but feel she was slowly piecing him together.

Nonetheless, they were here to work, and she had little time for such idle distractions.

“While those all sound like suitable ideas, I advise you work on them in your own time. Now, perhaps you may explain the… less official reason which makes this so urgent ?” she asked pointedly.

He jumped a little at the sudden dive back to reality.

“What ? Oh, yes. Well, it’s one big excuse to have a discussion with Edelgard about Walhart the Conqueror,” he explained. Her incomprehension must have shown on her face, because he actually looked a bit sheepish before giving further context. “She… worries me. I feel as though, if left to her own devices, she’ll eventually come to believe that… Edelgard must be sacrificed for the von Hresvelg to exist, if that is understandable ? She seems to believe that her feelings are shackles which will hold her back and I am… yes, a little worried at where that path would lead her.”

Well, that was not what she’d expected. How… unexpectedly naive of him.

“If she aims to claw back her throne from the vultures which seized it, she will need to be strong. Some of her enemies will be the parents of her peers and friends. She will have no place for sentimentality if she is to succeed,” she lectured him.

It must have been the wrong thing to say, because at her words his eyes flashed with anger, and he quit his pacing, rounding on her suddenly.

“So strength alone is the quality of rule ? How unexpectedly _reptilian_ of you, Archbishop. And what about…” he began, though to her surprise he trailed off, and reined in his obvious frustration. “No, I’m not having this discussion right now. Not before you’ve finally gotten around to telling me that story of yours. And not until, if these seminars do end up happening, you’ve come and attended the one I will give about Exalt Emmeryn. If you can still say that to my face afterwards, we’ll… revisit this,” he said, visibly swallowing the desire to argue at length.

Good. She didn’t have the time to waste.

“Then I suppose you had better get to work on a proposal which will pass Seteth’s scrutiny. Good night, Robin.”

Her dismissal was a bit curt, but he should have kept his mouth shut rather than make that reptilian jab. Besides, Shamir should be back with her report soon, and there was no time to get bogged down in debating such subjects.

She, better than anyone, understood that necessity was the mother of sacrifice.

* * *

“I can’t do it, By. I can’t do this. I didn’t think it could get worse, but it did. Alois somehow managed to find himself a _worse_ sense of humour while I was gone, and I don’t want to be here anymore,” Jeralt mourned inside his beer.

With agonising slowness, Byleth fixed him with what he alone knew was a disappointed stare, and slowly reached over to him and gave him two cursory, mechanical pats on the shoulder.

“There, there,” she suggested woodenly, half-questioning, half-exasperated.

“Why did I even get stuck in this place again ?…” he carried on, feeling a severe longing for the inn at Remire and a more simple life.

“Hear, hear,” sighed an unexpected voice in an eerie echo, as Robin reached over to tap his mug against his and set down next to him.

He looked oddly tired, and distinctly less cheery than usual.

Unsurprisingly, his better half sat down at their table not two seconds later, once again holding onto a cup of wine. What did she think this place was ? Couldn’t she be a normal person and drink a tankard of vaguely bitter swill like the rest of them ? Nobles, he swore to the Goddess. Not even once.

“And here I thought I’d never see you be anything less than obnoxious,” he ribbed him, curious to know what could have him down.

“Met with Rhea earlier tonight.”

Ah, that explained that.

“Say no more,” he allowed, raising his mug at him, and for a second or two he basked in an unexpected feeling of companionship. Not his first choice for a comrade-in-suffering, but everybody in this bloody pile of rocks worshipped the ground their Archbishop walked on.

“I had thought we’d _definitely_ settled our issues with the Archbishop yesterday ?” Lucina asked pointedly, and he pretended not to be interested. Yeah, he’d heard that Rhea, Seteth and these two had disappeared for most of the afternoon yesterday, and no one was quite sure where they’d been, so he had to admit to some curiosity.

“There’s some things you can sort by beating each other up, Luci, and some things you can’t. You definitely smoothed things out but I… think I just don’t like her very much ?” 

“I’m sorry, you _what_?” he interjected, incapable of ignoring what he’d just heard.

“Oh, oh yeah, was probably not supposed to say that part out loud. Don’t go spreading it around, that Cyril kid might kill me in my sleep if he hears I threw down with his precious lady Rhea,” the man answered distractedly, mind still clearly stuck in other places.

Thankfully, Lucina expanded a little on that lacking explanation, no doubt taking pity on him.

“They were arguing like children, so Seteth and I took them to a training ground and let them vent their aggression in a more direct manner,” she added, sounding slightly disbelieving at her own words.

Yeah, he would be too.

“Huh, well… that’s a thing. Good on you for still being in one piece, she doesn’t fight often, but when she does, she’s… vicious.”

“The Archbishop can fight ?” asked his daughter, finally joining the conversation and sounding a little too eager to his taste. Curse her for inheriting her father’s battle fetish !

Although in hindsight, raising her in a mercenary band and teaching her to fight from the moment she could walk probably contributed to this state of affairs.

“Yeah, now that she’s playing the kindly mother figure she doesn’t like to attract too much attention to it, but she’s a warrior alright,” he snorted. “Back when we were younger, it wasn’t rare for her to accompany us on the more dangerous mission, and let me tell you, she led from the front. And not because it looked pretty either — one of the best people I’ve ever seen with a sword, and that’s setting aside she’s one of the best Reason users in Fódlan and the undisputed best Faith caster alive.”

His daughter seemed to consider his words with a tiny frown.

“… I have trouble picturing her in the thick of the melee. It seems… out of place,” she admitted, having apparently reached her decision.

“And she’s worked hard to keep it that way, no doubt,” he sighed. “You’ll catch on eventually, but she’s not above… letting people see what they want to see,” he concluded a bit lamely, suddenly remembering they had an audience.

A spark of interest had seemingly revitalised Robin a little, while Lucina looked on openly curious.

“No, by all means, continue, please,” urged the white-haired little shit.

“Do I look like the sort of unprofessional merc who’d spit on his employer ?” he half-evaded instead. It was even true ; just not the reason he wasn’t comfortable with this.

“That’s quite alright,” Lucina intervened, thankfully cutting the grass from under her partner’s feet. “We are not interested into coming into conflict with said employer _yet again_ , are we ?” she asked Robin pointedly.

He’d noticed she did a lot of that.

“Yeah, yeah, this one wasn’t even my fault. Went to her to suggest something for work. By the way, you and I are running a weekly seminar with the House leaders and Petra on rulership as soon as I can get Seteth to okay a program. Rhea’ll be guest lecturing a few times too.”

“… I would have liked to be consulted before that decision was made,” she quietly seethed, visibly annoyed. Not that he blamed her : no one enjoyed having extra responsibilities dumped on them. Just look at him.

Except Alois. Alois was always too busy being chuffed at the honour of being entrusted with a task to realise he was doing Jeralt’s share of the work, and that was why he was a great second, when he wasn’t joking.

“Yeah, sorry it came a little out of nowhere, but I had a chat with Edelgard and Hubert earlier today about our little… point of contention,” he grimaced, and now he was lost again.

But his curiosity was definitely piqued again, and he was listening very intently now. Because he was a gossipy old meddler, yes, but also because a withered, dusty part of his brain which automaticallyconcerned itself with the monastery’s safety immediately went on alert, for the first time in a very long time.

“… And this was your conclusion ?”

“I think she might be on the wrong end of the Emmeryn-Walhart rulership scale, and that it’s going to get worse with time.”

“… You want to talk to her about Walhart.”

“I couldn’t do it one-on-one. That girl is way too guarded, and there’s apparently some family circumstances. I can’t be lecturing her specifically or she won’t listen.”

“And you need me there because you are scared you will be too soft on her.”

To that, there was no answer, until Lucina picked up again with a sigh.

“Fine, you fool. But if you are right, and she persists in this direction, I will not be tender. Do not complain then.”

Robin gave her a weak smile.

“You’re the best, love,” he thanked her, drawing a blush that surprised Jeralt. How did a girl with so much composure in her day-to-day life lose all her bearings as soon as she was somewhere mildly private with Robin ?

At this point, the two seemed to realise that they had an audience, in an amusing echo to five minutes prior.

“No, by all means, continue, please,” he smirked at them, enjoying the role reversal.

“Fair,” Robin conceded, before his eyes widened as he looked behind them. “Anyway,” he began a little hurriedly, rising from the bench, “I’ve fulfilled my part of the deal keeping you here long enough and our drinks are paid for, so we’ll be off now, good luck !” he half-yelled, already halfway to the door.

He was about to ask what was going on went a hand clamped onto his shoulder like a vice.

“Saddle me with your tab, will you ?” Anna fumed from behind him, voice seething with barely restrained violence.

He tried to move away from her, but she only gripped tighter, and huh, he never would have expected her to be quite so strong.

“Now, let it not be said I can’t cut a deal for a regular, so I’ll forgive you, just this once. But in exchange, I am going to get shitfaced tonight, and you are going to cover all of it. Understood ?”

Damn, but that woman had a scary smile on her.

“And if I don’t intend to play along ?” he tried, hoping it was a bluff.

“You’re barred from my shop, so’s your daughter, all the Knights, also the students, and I make sure they all know it, and I spread word to all the merchants around here you don’t pay your debts,” she flatly informed him, all expression disappearing from her face.

“That’s a… little harsh,” he suggested, silently a little impressed, though not particularly threatened. He’d seen worse.

“I like money.”

Well, he could understand that. He’d been accused of being a bit of a miser at times too, after all.

“Fair. Any other option ?”

She raked her eyes slowly down his body, then up again, before raising a suggestive eyebrow at him.

“Drinking it is, then.”

A little cough drew them out of their conversation. Opposite them, Byleth sat quietly, staring judgingly at them. Belatedly, he realised that Anna’s grip had lessened and she was now more leaning onto his shoulder than grabbing it, and he’d turned around to face her. Combined with the fact she’d leaned in a little to deliver her threat, and, well… he supposed to an outside observer it might look more improper than it really was.

She tilted her head to the side, as thoughchanging her physical perspective would help her gain a new one.

‘Help’, he mouthed.

“I think… I don’t want to be here for this,” was her final verdict, falling upon him like a physical weight. To a bystander, she probably sounded like she’d just attained a profound revelation, but _he_ could hear the imperceptible tone that crept into her voice whenever she felt like teasing him.

She was enjoying his discomfort and abandoning him here ! His own daughter !

“This is all I get for raising you, huh ?”

“I promised Linhardt and Dorothea I would have dinner with them to go over today’s Reason lecture,” she informed him tonelessly, but he caught the little twinkle in her eye that meant this was a lie.

And without further ado, she walked out and left him right there.

He looked back up at Anna.

An amused smirk was all that greeted him.

“Well, now the kids are gone, I guess we can get the mood going at last !” she crowed, but her smile was all teeth as she leaned in a little more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So basically, I wrote myself into a corner regarding that Edelgard/Robin conversation, because it was supposed to happen at the beginning of chap 7 at the very latest, and even that was already not optimal, but I kept padding out 6 & 7 and so I put it off. As a result, I feel like Robin's mood feels like it's doing a bit of a whiplash, when the quicker pace would have originally made it feel like a more organic transition, but at this point it just needed to happen and I can only rewrite this a certain amount of times before giving up.
> 
> This also means that I finally got to do a Robin POV where we see the Robin behind the mask that I've been (apparently poorly) hinting at. He's a bit less entertaining than usual Robin, but hopefully a bit more likeable and understandable too !
> 
> This was originally going to be a transition chapter before the practice battle to show everyone settling into routine, and there's traces of that still, which is why you have these little scenes of just people doing people things. There were going to be much more, but the chapter was long and honestly I think the point was made and it's time to move on into the canon time period, at least.
> 
> At least I liked the Felix scene. I think it's by far the best part of this chapter, and definitely the one that I enjoyed writing the most, alongside the Jeralt, Anna and Byleth scene. I had really not planned on their comedy dynamics, but it's so relaxing to write them that now they're creeping up even when I don't mean to.
> 
> Also, after the last few chapters, that's quite enough Robin, so coming up, some Byleth leading her House, and some mentor!Lucina. Also, probably another viewpoint I wasn't planning on hijacking like 4k words. I don't even know anymore.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed reading !


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember when this updated weekly ? Me neither.
> 
> In all seriousness, our first foray into true canon timeline, as the students ready themselves for their first battle ! Also, I get to write some Byleth scenes which don't happen in a bar, Robin and Lysithea have a chat and Felix gets beaten up again. Hope you enjoy, as always I have no beta so typos are likely, I'll go over it in the next few days and pick up what I notice but sorry in advance if there's anything particularly egregious - with my current speed, I just sort of want to get these out once they're done rather than sit on them any longer than necessary.

When Felix had heard about the blank-faced mercenary who’d taken over the Eagles, he’d expected a stern, no-nonsense professional — in the vein of those severe, scarred professionals he’d often seen his father hire when Fraldarius troops alone weren’t enough to take care of a given issue.

He’d guessed he was a little off the mark, from what little he’d seen of her since, as her serious air had revealed itself to be a permanent feature rather than an affectation to command respect, but he still didn’t expect _this_.

“That is why nobility has historically favoured and emphasised the role played by cavalry in battle, and why most of you will have now realised you also carry this bias. While its uses are many and it grants an undeniable mobility advantage on an open field, depending on terrain and troop layout it can in fact quickly turn into a burden. Even Faerghus nobility, who have historically counted on heavy cavalry as the backbone to all their private armies, have in the last couple of centuries gradually shifted to more balanced troop repartition, often trading battalions for at least lighter, more versatile cavalry — though this shift must also be put in context with the opening of the Royal Academy of Sorcery in 978, and the influx of trained mages in need of employ it created.”

Her tone was even, her delivery clear and assured. She paused between every small grouping of information, waiting to see if anyone had questions.

“If you are curious to know more about the subject, I invite you to take a look at Gustav von Hrym’s _On the conduct of mounted warfare_ or Atticus Galatea’s addendum to the 1137 reprint of the _Commentary on the Storming of Arianrhod_ , both of which can be found in the Knight’s Hall library. Be warned that the latter shows a heavy bias in favour of pegasus-mounted troops, so make sure to exert your critical thinking.”

Huh, he hadn’t figured Ingrid’s gruff, hardy grandfather for the writing type. The more you know.

He thought back to Hanneman’s stuffy, easily-distracted speech and Robin’s theatrical delivery and informative but unforgivingly fast rambling.

Why couldn’t they get clear, engaging lessons like this ?

Maybe he’d make a habit to drop by the door of Black Eagles lessons more often.

“Good, if you have no further questions, then, you may leave.”

The Eagles began to rise as she dismissed them, some more excitedly than others. That small girl with the purple hair (Bernadetta ?) all but ran past him, Linhardt was being dragged away by a Caspar who was chattering excitedly at him, Petra was excitedly entertaining an equally-excited Ferdinand about the subject of the lesson while that Dorothea girl looked on oddly. Noticing him looking, the latter threw him a wink at which he scoffed. One day, the girl would understand he was simply not interested.

The last two students remained behind for a bit, Hubert eyeing him carefully while Edelgard questioned her teacher on… something. He couldn’t hear from here, and didn’t care much. The girl may have grudgingly impressed him, from what little he’d seen — strength, and the willingness to use it — but he didn’t care much for her the way the others seemed to. Especially the Boar.

Eventually, they finally left, as Byleth noticed him waiting at the door and dismissed them. He ignored the Empress-to-be’s aggrieved glare with practiced ease — he’d been ignoring Ingrid’s for years, after all.

He made his way inside the room, already in the mood, and planted himself firmly in front of the Professor’s desk, arms crossed.

“Yes ?” she asked.

“Fight me,” he answered.

She had no other reaction than to tilt her head slightly at him, before speaking up, voice still as flat as ever.

“Why ?”

Goddess damn it, but why did nobody in this _military_ _academy_ ever want to fight without a three-page essay on the reason ?

* * *

It took a bit of finagling, and a lot of frustration from the utter lack of emotions displayed by the former mercenary, but she finally acceded to his request after he grudgingly explained the context. Why did he need to explain anyway ? He was a student here to learn to fight, she was a teacher here to teach them to fight, why did everybody have to make a big deal out of it ?

But he was here at last, about to face off against the Professor. Finally. He’d been waiting for this moment ever since hearing about the Boar’s little bandit misadventure. Both for the sake of fighting a strong opponent, and for the sake of seeing how he stacked up against a master swordswoman that had not straight-up walked out of one of Ingrid’s bedtime stories.

He gave her a nod to signify his readiness, she answered, and at the unspoken agreement they began to slowly circle each other.

How to play this ? He had little idea of Byleth’s skill level, or where her strengths lie — he’d not had the opportunity to watch her fight yet. He knew that she was good, and was unlikely to favour flashy moves. Not much, all told.

He considered waiting for her to make a move, to tease out how she fought, but quickly renounced the idea. Not only was the onus on him to demonstrate his skills, but surrendering the initiative was just not him.

So, much like against Lucina, he darted forward to see just how fast she could move, leaving an opening on purpose to see how fast she would counter. Her parry came quick, smooth and steady, and there was no wasted movement in her riposte, but he’d already stepped back to get out of her range.

Fast and precise, yes — but not as much as Lucina.

He could work with this.

Thrice more he repeated this pattern, striking each time from a different angle to gauge her reaction times and the fluidity of her stance, to much the same result. Clearly, she would not leave him any openings, so it was up to him to create them.

Finally committing, he let her think he was going for another teasing blow before batting away the expected counter and stepping in. A good sidestep let her avoid his thrust, but slowed down her counter enough for him to catch it on his blade. This time, he took advantage of their swords crossing to lock them and step forward, pushing with all his might.

He was in her guard, he was pushing her blade up, he just needed to disengage quickly and —

He didn’t have much time to understand what happened, but his final heave met only empty air, and made him lose his balance. His stumble forward was interrupted almost immediately by the pommel of her sword colliding with his face, knocking him straight down on his ass, and her sword’s edge came to rest against his neck.

She stared at him, face still as unreadable as ever.

She’d— she’d just stepped back. She hadn’t even baited it, had she ? The moment he had overcommitted for that final breakthrough, she’d identified his mistake and exploited it. One step back, a quick strike, and he’d lost.

There was only one thing he could say to that.

“Again.”

* * *

Byleth wasn’t quite sure what to make of the Fraldarius boy. Seeing as another teacher had recommended she help him out, she had acquiesced to his request, but she was not seeing where the issue was. There was little wasted movement to his swordsmanship, his basics were fairly solid, his footwork excellent for one his age — he was definitely very good.

Not good enough to beat her, but she had a reputation for a reason, and she had likely been killing people since before he’d ever held steel.

Really, if all those nobles wanted their children to be great warriors, she wasn’t quite sure why they didn’t ask Jeralt for tips. His methods were obviously more effective.

She took her blade away from his neck, leaving him panting on the floor. Understandable. This was already their twenty-fourth bout, and he’d lasted longer on this one, acting more cautiously. That didn’t seem to suit him, though — he’d not been nearly as threatening during this one as he usually was. He’d come much closer to grazing her before. Besides, he focused too much on her sword when he was on the defensive ; he should’ve seen her kicking his kneecap coming.

“I understand. You’re not much faster or stronger than me, but the reason you always win is because there’s always that hunger in you. You always aim for victory, don’t you ?”

Didn’t everyone ? Aiming for anything else didn’t seem very useful, and she told him as much.

“Hah ! Not likely you’ll see a knight aiming for victory at all costs. They’re far too hung-up in all their virtuousness. Me, I believe that strength is its own virtue. Grow strong so you may live, and live to grow stronger. Nothing else matters.”

She supposed that was fair enough, but something about this tickled at her — until she remembered just why Lucina had sent him to her. Now that she thought about it, the problem seemed far more obvious.

“But what does victory bring you ?”

He turned to her, confusion visible on his face.

“What ?”

“You say I am always aiming for victory, and that is true. But the victory in itself does not interest me — it is only an obligatory condition to fulfil in order to achieve my objective. I take neither pride nor joy in the act of triumph itself. That is why I can afford to fight like I do : calmly, efficiently, and ready to adapt to my opponent’s mistakes. There is no battle-high for me to lose myself to, no pleasure or excitement to divert me from my task. You, on the other hand, see the _fight_ as the objective. It’s no wonder you lack follow-through — there’s nothing in it for you if you win, because what will be left for you when you are the strongest ?”

She tried to keep some harshness out of her tone — she had no intention of hurting his feelings, but what she was saying was not particularly kind — but she was not known for her capacity to emote, and judging by his flinch he’d taken the full brunt of _that_ hit.

“I—“ he began before stopping, visibly trying to come up with a rebuttal that wasn’t just reflexive denial.

“It is not me you should find that answer for,” she interrupted. “Take your time to think on it — I must go grab lunch before the dining hall closes.”

And on that note, she turned around and left him there. It was perhaps a little cruel, but she had already spoken too much to her taste, and she had a feeling Felix would make a poor conversation partner at the moment.

Inexplicably, however, she stopped halfway to the training grounds door to throw him one last bone.

“I am not the best match for you. You have the qualities to fight like me, but I do not think fighting like a true mercenary is your best calling. I must concur with Lucina ; do not come back until you have talked to Robin. He might interest you in a better path yet.”

Heading out again, she couldn’t help but wonder when she’d gotten so soft.

Horror of horrors, this teaching gig might be _growing_ on her.

Her father would never let her live this down.

* * *

The knock on his door was tentative at best, but he still heard it — years of the shyer Shepherds feeling embarrassed when they came to see him having taught him to listen for the pitter-patter of feet shuffling outside an entrance while their owner worked up the courage to knock.

Olivia must have spent literal hours just pacing in front of his door if you added up all the time she’d hesitated to knock before he’d wised up.

“Come in !” he called out, casting a forlorn look at Achilles Goneril’s _Observed Almyran Tactics_ before slipping in a bookmark and closing it. So much for finishing it today, then.

To his surprise, it was the small white-haired girl from the Deers that came in, the one with the weird name. Lysithea ? She was a kid from the… Ordelia family ? Yes, that sounded right. Alliance nobility, somewhere on the Empire border, if he remembered correctly. Probably not too important or he’d have paid more attention to them when learning this.

“Well, this is a surprise,” he happily greeted her, mindful that they had never talked outside of class yet. And she looked far too tense for this to be about lectures — had he done anything to upset her ? Time to go fishing. “What can I help you with, miss… Ordelia, was it ?”

“Yes,” she confirmed, seeming to relax a little at the normality of his question, but her hackles went right back up almost instantly. A delicate hand, then. He’d messed up with one white-haired girl this week, better try not to make it two. “I was hoping to talk to you about some…. things you mentioned in your lecture.”

So it was about class ? That was… odd. He couldn’t think of anything he'd said in particular that would make her quite that defiant… unless she was very religious ? No, she didn't strike him as the type. Maybe an established heretic carefully sounding out a potential ally ? No, she just looked far too young for that.

He wracked his brains, trying to dredge up memories of anything in his curriculum which could put her on her guard so, but came up empty. Maybe it was about the Fire Emblem thing ? She’d seemed really frustrated by his lack of definitive answer when he left, but she hadn’t hunted him down since. Did Claude tell her ? It would be what he’d do, but that kid had some impressive trust issues. Besides, she didn’t look annoyed or curious, rather… very nervous.

What to do, what to do ? He needed to respond quick so that her suspicion levels wouldn’t rise even higher, but if he showed he had no idea, she might lose her nerve… Which he supposed wasn’t necessarily a problem.

But he was curious now !

Time, then, to go with old faithful.

“Ah, yes, I imagined I might get a visit or two. Now, what in particular is it you wanted us to discuss ?” he asked her, giving her a genial, yet knowing, smile which successfully masked his confusion. When in doubt, let the opponent assume you know what you’re doing.

The girl threw another shifty-eyed look at the door which she’d carefully closed before coming in, then back to him, then at her feet and back to him again, before she straightened her spine and finally settled into glaring at him imperiously.

Naga almighty, she had the Look down pretty well too. Shame she was too obviously young for it to be particularly effective, but this one would be pretty intimidating too when she grew up. What were they feeding the girls in this monastery ?

“You hinted that there were… stronger implications of what having white hair might signify, compared to other colours. What exactly did you mean to imply by that ?” she challenged him, leaving him floored for a good second before he picked himself up, thankfully fast enough that she didn’t notice.

He talked about hair colours ? That wasn’t anywhere on his… Oh, he’d gone on a tangent with the Deers hadn’t he ? About blue hair… Ah, that was it, he remembered now ! _And I haven’t even gotten into white or green hair yet, so ask me another time if you’re curious._ Well he had invited them, but then why was she… It obviously wasn’t pure academic interest, unless she was secretly terrified of him and braving that fear to ask him.

Which meant that it had to do with her own white hair, and the only reason anyone would be that paranoid over their hair if it’s white would be…

Ah.

Ah crap.

Yes, that would be problematic.

The question, of course, was in the circumstances. What was the stigma behind use of dark magic here ? Hubert was the first regular user he’d come across, so would she be that nervous if it was self-inflicted ? Maybe she…

No, stop. He was taking too long to answer, and already she’d gained a suspicious gleam in her eyes. Quick, throw her a bone before—

“You… truly weren’t targeting me when you said that, didn’t you ?” she replied, a hint of relief and… dread ? No, mortification creeping into her voice.

“I do not make it a habit to single out my students if I can avoid it, no,” he demurred, engaging full gallop into damage control mode. “However, it is a subject which can be… delicate, so I was wondering how to best put it. Lucina often tells me I could use a bit more tact, if you can believe it,” he added, flashing her what he hoped was a disarming grin and a wink.

The confused look she gave him told him he had his opportunity to seize back control of the situation.

“You see, white hair usually has two strong associations. The first, and most harmless one, is that of significant magical potential. It’s been theorised that this comes from one of the Radiant Hero’s contemporaries, the Queen of Dawn, Micaiah. She set out much of the practical early-modern Light and Anima magic theory — what you’d call Faith and Black magic here — and remains one of the vanishingly few people to have ever vanquished a god in combat,” he added, making sure to add some extra whimsy to his tone to keep the girl off-guard. Judging by how wide her eyes went at that tidbit, he’d succeeded in his distraction. Good, he could focus now. “She was the first famous enduring folklore figure to have white hair, and its association with magical power has stuck around ever since. Funnily enough, contemporary records actually also call her the Silver-Haired Maiden, so it’s possible it’s just one big collective mistake, but it is what it is.”

“Hold on a second — she… fought and beat a god in combat ?” At his encouraging nod, her look grew a little venomous and some of the wonder bled from her voice. “Do you think me a foolish child ? It is a pretty story, but it is as unlikely as the contents of your lesson was,” she accused him.

Hoh, didn’t want to risk being taken for a fool ? Interesting.

“Funny you should mention that — it’s the same story, and the god she and the Radiant Hero fought was in fact the logic-driven goddess I mentioned. but we’re straying — if you are so interested, I’ve begun translating my own collected notes on the time period so that you lot will have some manner of written source, flimsy as it may be — importing the needed books is both too expensive and would require all of you to learn at least basic Archanean, but I’ll leave a reading list in them if any of you ever fancy to try.”

“That said, that was the first association. The second one is… less auspicious,” he began, and this time allowed himself to turn serious again when he saw her immediately tense. “It lies in the tendency for those who have been deeply affected in some manner by dark magic to see their hair turn white.”

Judging from how stiff she immediately became, he felt fairly safe in assuming he’d hit the nail on the head.

“… Is that so ?” she asked, affecting a sort of faux-nonchalance that would have been more believable if she hadn’t looked ready to fire three dozen spells at him if he so much as twitched wrong.

“Yes. There are several ways through which this can happen — the most common is simply as an aftereffect of a curse or hex aimed at sapping your lifeforce. Another frequent reason, often amongst its more… malevolent users, is to be utterly irresponsible in your use of it, to the point you allow it to corrupt your lifeforce, though there’s usually other signs to go along with this ; increasingly visible veins, paling skin, unnatural gauntness, darkening sclera… chances are, if someone strikes you as unnaturally creepy in a never-seen-the-sun way, there’s good money on them having pushed their usage of dark magic too far. Your other fellow dark magic user, Hubert von Vestra, is showing the very earliest signs of this — nothing dangerous or even permanent, but if he does not learn to use his skills more judiciously, I wager he’ll make for an unpleasant sight in fifteen or twenty years’ time.”

“How did you know I use dark magic ?” she countered, instantly going on the defensive (well, even more so than she already was). Judging by her lack of an other reaction, this definitely wasn’t what had happened to her, then.

“Miss Ordelia, I am an exceedingly poor user of dark magic, by virtue of having never wanted to practice it, but very few can feel its currents as I do. And do settle down, because this leads us to the other way in which dark magic can lead to alteration of the body, including, as in my case, to white hair : physical manipulation of it through the use of Alchemy.”

And bingo.

“ What do you mean ?”

Yes, that terrified look meant he’d found the cause. And this wasn’t fear of being caught — but fear of someone knowing. So… likely not voluntary, then.

Crap.

Good thing he’d hinted at his own… status — it gave him ground to establish a thread of commonality.

“Experimental dark magic, as I told your house leader, is more often than not the surest way to find yourself a shallow grave. It is dangerous to the self and to others in an almost equal, astronomical measure, and when it does not kill you it almost always leads to someone putting you down for good. Alchemy is dark magic’s… attempt at answering this issue. It can best be described as the manipulation of living matter through the infusion of dark magic in order to grant a working stable, self-sustaining perpetuity. While it is most often used to empower poisons and curses or for the sake of necromancy,” — was that a shiver across her spine ? The usual disgust, or a more deep-rooted fear of the dead ? Maybe she’d already encountered Risen, or something similar ? — “it can also be used to alter the body.”

He paused to allow her to digest that information. Poor thing, he was perhaps going a little strong, but, well, he’d tried a softer touch on Edelgard and that hadn’t quite worked out hadn’t it ? Besides, Claude seemed a little less tense since their chat, so being blunt had shown results.

Right ?

“In my case, the easiest way to put it is that I am the product of generations of alchemically-influenced breeding, shaped into the perfect vessel for an entity of immense dark magical power,” he admitted. “My friend Henry’s parents were… devout followers of the same entity, and attempted something similar with him, though they deemed him a failure and abandoned him.

“If it’s any comfort,” he offered, “the two of us have managed to lead… satisfactory, if not particularly easy lives despite this. I imagine you don’t particularly want to share what you went through with a stranger, but I’ll be happy to hear it if ever you decide otherwise,” he smiled at her, but it didn’t seem to be as soothing an offer as he might have hoped.

“But… I— How do you deal with knowing that… you will die early ?”

You what.

“You what ?” he echoed, unable to conjure anything more clever in his surprise.

“All the physicians say I will likely not make it to twenty-five. Is that… Is that not normal ?”

She just looked back at him with a mix of horror and confusion he was not quite sure how to parse.

“No ! Just how badly did… In order to have that much of an effect of your lifeforce, they would have needed to pump you so full of the stuff you would be bleeding purple smoke ! There’s just no possible way that…” he began, before interrupting himself. This was serious — no time for tangents. “By all means do not feel as though you have to tell me, but do you know what their objective was ? There must have been an external factor of some kind…”

“They…” she began, before losing steam and staring at her shoes for three whole minutes. He let her. That… was not something he wanted to rush her about. Habitually tactless he might be, but, well, it’d taken a while for him to forgive Vaike for joking about his own… unfortunate alchemical circumstances once.

“They wanted to implant a second Crest in me. And they did. I have a major Crest of Gloucester, and a minor Crest of Charon But the effects on my health were too deleterious, so they called me a failure and simply… left me like this,” she finally told him, her previous nervousness slowly melting into bitter resignation.

“But if crests are… there would need to be some form of blood covenant, surely ? But assuming it was done without the consent of the originals then… that’s what the alchemical element is for ? Isolating the…” he began, but stopped himself.

He’d stepped on Rhea’s toes enough as is, and he was fairly sure she would get _really_ angry with him if he blabbed out loud his certainty that the Crests were draconic in origin to a student. Which reminded him, he still hadn’t gotten that story out of her and Seteth. Something to nag her about soon — though he’d give her a couple of weeks before getting pushy.

But if Crests truly were, as he suspected, blood pacts between some bloodlines and dragons, much like the Jugdrali ones were, or the Brand of the Exalt and his own Mark of Grima, how did one go about artificially granting one ?

Consuming the blood of a dragon ? That could work, but there didn’t seem to be many around and their existence seemed a well-guarded secret. Or could it be that the blood of anyone with a Crest would be enough ? A Major Crest, probably, the concentration of draconic power would be too low in a Minor one… maybe ? He had no clue how this worked.

Maybe that was what the alchemy was for then ? To draw out the latent magic in the blood, if it was too weak ? But wouldn’t the different energies… conflict… 

Oh, this was way beyond his expertise.

Back to important matters though — distraught student in his office, yes.

“I… Have suspicions as to what they might have done, but I need to have a quick chat with someone who knows more about Crests to understand their functioning better before I can be anything resembling sure, and if I am correct it is… beyond my expertise to fix. I’ll have a look into my father’s notes, but he was more zealot cultist than mad scientist, I’m afraid.”

“Your father ?” she asked, a little confused at his non-sequitur.

“I did mention the alchemically-infused breeding, yes ? Whose idea do you think it was ?” he answered with a humourless smile. Even acknowledging Validar was his father still caused something inside him to shrivel in disgust.

Said disgust was clearly echoed in Lysithea’s face as she pondered the implications of that statement, and he was quite happy to leave it at that.

“So you cannot do anything ?” she half-asked, half-stated, looking defeated already. Poor kid. He’d lived with a literal deadline over his head for what, a month at most and it had made him fairly miserable — only the urgency of Grima’s threat to _literally everything_ helped him stave off a breakdown at the realisation that killing Grima likely meant killing himself too.

“Well, _I_ probably can’t do anything, but if my suspicions are correct, then I know who just might. It means, though it means that I need to send a letter back home to someone I _really_ didn’t want to contact…”

“Why ? Are they a bad person ?” she asked, unknowing of just what menace she was talking about.

“Oh no, no… Well, probably not ? Maybe ? As long as you let me point her in the right direction she’s fine, but Tharja is a little… obsessive. In the watches-me-sleep way,” he clarified at her dubious look. “That is not an exaggeration. I caught her doing it once, and the only reason I haven’t caught her more is because she’s found ways not to be noticed since. It’s uncomfortable, but she is loyal and, more importantly, far more knowledgeable than me when it comes to dark magic.”

“I… see…”

“Don’t worry about it, I needed to send a couple of letters back anyway and it’s my problem to deal with. Anyway, I’m… sorry that I can’t do more for you until I know more.”

“Don’t be. It’s… better than what I feared going in.”

“I’ll take that,” he smiled, and there was a certain gratification to seeing her unwind a bit. “On an unrelated note, I may not be much good at dark magic, but I do have a lot of notes from very good users for safekeeping, and I’ve begun translating some of them if you’re interested. Hubert has some already, so seek him out for them, but I also have…. Well, it’s not finished, but how good are you with reverse-engineering diagrams ?”

“I can do it,” she nodded determinedly.

“Great ! Let me find it,” he said as he began to rummage through the mess of papers on his desk. “Ah ! There it is ! As a gesture of solidarity between white-haired people, the schematics and theory for Micaiah’s Pyre, as developed by the Queen of Dawn herself !” he crowed.

Then paused for a second.

“Well not quite, it’s been through a few thousand years of alterations and optimisation, and this one is my own altered version, but the basic formula is hers. The framework and introductory theory is all translated already, and you should be able to work out the nitty-gritty from the schematics.”

“Thank you ! But… what exactly is it ?”

“Oh, yes, forgot that. It’s a Fire-family spell, which… you know Bolganone ?”

“Yes ?”

“Well it’s similar, but stronger, more precise and with a defensive component to the mana flow which leaves you less exposed to counter-attack. Not really any more complex either.”

“Really ?” she asked, eyes regaining a little sparkle. “But why use Bolganone then ?”

“Well, because Bolganone has much less wasteful mana expenditure. For a combat mage, Bolganone will almost always have sufficient power for their given intent, and will allow them to conserve their energy for the rest of the battle. But, if you’re anything like me, I imagine that won’t be a problem, will it ?”

“No,” she replied distractedly as she stood up, mind already clearly elsewhere. “I don’t think it will be.

“Thank you, professor.”

* * *

A few minutes later, Lysithea was walking back towards the library when she suddenly froze dead in her tracks.

“Wait, w—what was that about _necromancy_ !?”

* * *

An air of anticipation slowly built up over the monastery that evening, as the real first test of the students’ strength closed, and they readied themselves for their first taste of competition.

Sat in Seteth’s office, the faculty convened one last time to make sure everything was ready for tomorrow’s mock battle. As they finally sorted out the last of the supplies needed, there was a lull in the conversation (which Lucina had checked out of long ago — in truth, between Robin and Seteth, the rest of them had hardly been needed for logistics) until Jeralt finally drew them out of their silence by throwing a purse on Seteth’s desk.

“So, if we’re all done with the boring stuff, let’s get down to the important things. Ten gold on Byleth’s little Eagle chicks,” he challenged the rest of the room, throwing a cocky smirk at Robin and Manuela’s side of the room.

Clearly, Lucina realised, he’d immediately identified the two most likely to follow him in this.

Also, couldn’t that woman at least pretend to cover up when she was sat next to someone who was spoken for ? Not everybody had to be as shameless as the Annas !

“Captain Jeralt ! Perhaps we might conduct ourselves as professionals—”

“Oh come off it, Seteth,” snorted Manuela. “Our dear Captain is right, I’ve been waiting for this since we sat down. Ten on my Deer to trounce the fossil’s Lions !”

“Why Manuela I never— fine, then, I’ll meet your wager! If you teach them as diligently as you clean your room, I cannot imagine the Blue Lions shall have anything to fear !” came the expected outraged response.

Poor Byleth looked… well, she looked blank-faced as ever, but she was fairly sure she detected in her eyes a mix of absolute embarassment at her father’s behaviour and indignant outrage at her fellow House professors not even accounting for her own Eagles. In the end, the latter seemed to win out, as she threw a handful of coins of her own on the table.

“Ten gold on the Eagles,” she announced, before doing that little head tilt she seemed to favour whenever she wanted her delivery to have maximum impact. “… How long has it been since you both last saw a battlefield anyway ?”

Over the twin cries of outrage, she shared an amused look with Robin. The former mercenary was a little odd, but she was good company — in a way, she was a very nostalgic presence. She had spent so long growing up surrounded by eccentrics that every new one always felt a little familiar, like they carried a piece of the same home within them.

Jeralt’s laughter at his daughter’s unexpected braggadocio died down long enough to let him turn towards her, however.

“How about you, lass ? Want to throw your hat in ?” he taunted her.

“I prefer to be more frugal with my coin,” she demurred, doing her best to hide her relative lack of comfort with such practises, that she would have considered beneath an Exalt. Time spent with her father on the road, and losing the burden of her rank, had done a lot to help her learn to enjoy more common pastimes, but she still struggled to fit in at such times.

Fortunately, she had someone to ease her into such things.

Unfortunately, it was Robin.

“All the spare iron swords you keep say otherwise,” he crowed happily opposite her. “Come on Lucina, I’m already blowing most of our pay for the first month and what’s left of our savings on the letters we have to send home anyway, so might as well lose the rest !”

“Prudence is hardly a symptom of habitual overspending !” she protested, damning the faint blush she could feel rising. “But fine, I suppose I can indulge this once, if you must be so reckless with our coin.”

“Who are you kids even rooting for, anyway ?” asked an entertained Jeralt. He _did_ always seem to enjoy watching her get embarrassed — she would have to sic Anna on him, then. Perhaps he would find such situations less enjoyable from the other end.

“Golden Deer,” Robin instantly answered.

“Blue Lions,” she replied at the exact same time.

They stared at each other, and she silently dared him to try and make fun of her unescapable affinity for the colour blue. She had a thing or two to say about his fondness for raggedy underdog tacticians and white-haired mages too.

“Huh,” offered Jeralt as Manuela and Hanneman harrumphed at each other again, happy their house had been named but annoyed the other had gotten a pick too, “I guess I can see that, but why do you think they’ll win ?”

She shared another look with Robin at that. And, yes, _there_ was that little secret smug smile of his he did when he felt clever. He nodded back at her, and she knew they had come to the same conclusion.

“With all due respect, Captain Jeralt, you asked us who we would like to see win — not who we thought would emerge victorious,” she explained.

“The Black Eagles are going to win the thing in the end,” Robin completed, “I just reckon the Deer will give the most entertaining showing is all,” he shrugged.

“And I expect the Lions to give the most disciplined performance, for which I would enjoy seeing them rewarded,” she concurred.

“So that’s twenty from us on the Eagles ! I can’t see either Dimitri or Claude matching up to Edelgard’s decisiveness on a proper battlefield yet, and while other students could make up the difference I expect Byleth’s experience with small unit tactics to give them the edge,” her lover finished, echoing her own thoughts perfectly.

Much as it might worry her, if Robin could draw parallels between Edelgard and Walhart, then between what the girl had shown in lessons and that willpower, she would win. Not to mention that while it might not be polite to say it out loud, she expected Byleth to be a fair cut above the other two professors to take the field when it came to battle.

Their intervention led to another round of booming laughter from Jeralt, which nicely covered up Manuela’s indignant squawk and Hanneman’s offended huff. Byleth neatly sat back and said nothing, but she _did_ see her throw the slightest of smug smiles at her two opponents-to-be.

The good mood, however, was interrupted by the sound of the door opening and poor Seteth (who had been looking slightly horrified this whole time, and somewhat betrayed ever since she’d caved in) calling out as if to a descended god.

“Ah, Rhea ! Please remind our staff that this monastery is a holy place, and that such open gambling would set a bad example on our students !”

“Gambling ?” asked the Archbishop, looking somewhat confused at the room’s mood. “What about ?”

“Our teachers have been gambling about the outcome of tomorrow’s battle !” he cried, indignant.

“Have they now ?” Rhea drawled, running a seemingly disappointed look over all of them. Hanneman and Manuela looked suitably contrite, but she could swear that…

And then the Archbishop’s gaze landed on a straight-backed, defiant Jeralt (there it was again, that tenseness to his frame which appeared whenever the two were in the same room. It was such an odd thing, when one saw just how easily the two could fall into a rhythm of their own whenever they interacted. She wondered just how much they had in common. Robin was convinced there were family shenanigans, but she couldn’t help but be reminded of some of the Shepherds as Robin never knew them, older and wearier. As he himself had been. Comradeship, more than family. Just how long had these two known each other ?).

“The usual wager ?” she asked him, serene smile still stuck on a placid face, but there was a tinge of amusement to her voice now.

“Yep, no one’s dared to raise. Three-to-two on the Eagles, with Deers and Lions at six-to-one each right now,” Jeralt detailed, making Robin break into peals of cackling laughter that she was fairly sure he stole from Henry, and provoking an indignant strangled sound from Seteth. She couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the poor man. At least he had it better than Frederick.

“Oh ? How conservative. I suppose I shall have to liven things up, then. Twenty on the Eagles,” she announced, before turning to Byleth. “I expect good things from you, child,” she smiled at her.

The general good mood didn’t stop her from noticing Jeralt tensing immediately at this, despite his chuckles, but she let it go for now. Their affairs were not for her to intervene in.

* * *

Stepping away from the blackboard as she finished writing down her final schematic, Byleth finally looked back at the troops she’d been granted for this battle.

The troops stared back at her, flummoxed.

It began with Caspar.

“Hey, professor, isn’t this way too complicated ? You just need to point me to where you want me and I’ll knock them right out, no need for all this stuff !”

Bernie was mumbling to herself in a corner.

“What if I remember something wrong ? Or what if I forget something ? What if I screw everything up ? Oh no, Bernie, they’ll hate you if you mess up and make everyone lose and then the professor will hate you too and you’ll never be able to show your face outside again…”

Petra stared at her confusedly.

“Professor, what is being the meaning of that word, ‘asymmetrical’ ? And what is it having to do with catching hard places ?”

Dorothea seemed stunned.

“Wow, professor… I didn’t know you could speak _quite_ that much all at once…”

Ferdinand was indignant, one of the three moods he had proven capable of so far besides casual arrogance and bombastic enthusiasm.

“Professor, surely there is no need to resort to such trickery ! I can assure you I am capable of triumphing against any of our opponents on the field !”

His only answer was a dark, approving chuckle from Hubert, which only served to drive him further into a fit. Linhardt had fallen asleep long ago, by the look of it.

A flabbergasted Edelgard finally intervened.

“My teacher, while we appreciate the dedication you are showing to this task, perhaps we might benefit more from a… simpler plan, for those of us with less experience of the battlefield ?”

Byleth stared at her, not saying a word. In front of her, the whole class began to fidget uncomfortably, no doubt scared they’d upset their professor.

None of them could hear the mortifying embarrassment echoing inside her head, or Sothis’s peals of laughter in her mind. That girl, honestly. For someone so willing to give her opinion, she sure seemed to withhold her advice when convenient.

Still silent, she looked back to Edelgard, then the sheaf of papers she’d painstakingly written all her plans on. Back to Edelgard, then the plans again. Then the whole class.

If she was going to make a fool of herself, then she was at least going to watch them squirm.

“ _My, how boorish of you. Truly, you are quite the sore loser. Though perhaps such foolishness is to be expected of children…_ ” mused the definitely-not-a-ghost who’d elected residency in her mind, unseen still as she drifted out into corporeal form.

_I may be a child, but at least I don’t look like bedding me would be a crime_ , she huffed back mentally, delighting in Sothis’s shocked and horrified reaction, as she descended into a tirade on her vulgarity and poor manners. If she’d learned anything from hanging out between mercenaries and their clients, it was that being crude to an uptight person was the best way to avoid a conversation one didn’t want to have.

“ _I can hear you !_ ”

Well, now that she’d taken care of the completely imaginary voice of her dreams (“ _You are simply the worst !_ ”), time to face the music. She looked over her students again, and decided she’d left them to squirm long enough.

Still staring straight at them, she took hold of the considerable sheaf of papers she had spent her recent nights furiously laying down her plans on and set it on fire.

“I suppose we will not be using these then. Seeing as we only have four of you I can trust to keep cool and know what to do both, I’ll split you into four pairs, with one of you in charge overall. Edelgard, you’ll take lead, with Ferdinand as your adjutant. Ferdinand,” she cut him before he could protest, “your opposition to this is noted but as of now I can’t trust you not to break ranks in order to try and show her up. You want to be her Prime Minister, prove that you can work _with_ her too. Hubert, you’ll take another command with Bernadetta under you ; you’ll be cover fire, magic and bow. Petra, you’re the third one with Caspar. You’ll be our second line, let Edelgard draw our opponents and then strike where you see a weakness — act independently, but if either her or I call out orders, follow them. Linhardt, you’re on healing duty — don’t pull that face. Dorothea, you’re in charge of keeping him whole and keeping him motivated. Everyone clear ?”

There was another bout of silence.

“So, are we going in without anymore of a plan ? Forgive me, my teacher, but does this not seem a bit reckless ?” frowned Edelgard, something she had expected. She seemed the meticulous type.

“I mean, I don’t know, I like this way better,” offered Caspar, something she had also expected.

“Quite frankly, your house currently lacks the necessary cohesion for me to trust your teamwork. You could make up for that with enough battlefield experience to know the rough shape of things, but none of you have that. Failing that, I would rely on tactical rigour, but you all have just implied that you would not be capable of applying it on the battlefield. So the only thing I can do is to stop treating you all as a group and instead treat you all as separate entities on the battlefield, and just put you in position to exploit your individual talents. Pairs is the most I can trust you with.”

Judging from all their winces, that had been… the wrong thing to say ? But she had said nothing that was not true. Perhaps her delivery had been a bit harsh then ?

“Truly, you are not pulling your punches today, Professor…” cringed Ferdinand, validating her theory.

“I do not say this to shame you,” she denied. “It is early days, and I am the one who overlooked that you were not all the seasoned mercenaries I am accustomed to working with. Had I thought of it, I could’ve better tailored our plan to account for this, but it is now too late for such regrets.”

That sounded a bit heavy too, no ? Looking at all their glum faces, that was probably the case, yes. What to say to lift their spirits ? She had never been the one to give the rousing speeches — not that those were ever aimed at the mercenaries.

“Do not worry too much,” she told them in her best attempt at a soothing tone. “If you are ever unsure of what to do, I shall be right alongside you all. It is apparently poor form for the professors to join the thick of the melee straight away, but nothing was said about my acting as your tactician.”

Wait, she was being soft again, wasn't she ?

Her father must never hear of this.

(" _What is wrong with the two of you !?_ ")

“… I see,” Edelgard breathed out, tone filling with respect. “By having Ferdinand and I in front, we act as an obvious lure for the other Houses to aim for — and we are also the two best suited to holding a line, giving you time and an opportunity to see how the others deploy. By sacrificing me and Ferdinand, you get to be the last one to choose where to dispose your troops.”

“You make it sound more ruthless than it is. I have more battlefield experience than the others, which means I will react faster and better than them. I am simply putting us in a position which allows us to be reactive.”

“I _strongly_ disapprove of any plan which calls for Lady Edelgard to act as bait,” warned Hubert, taking that tone which was probably supposed to be threatening but had failed to cow anyone she’d seen him use it on so far bar Bernadetta (a low bar to clear).

“Noted,” she flatly answered, a little annoyed at his posturing. “But unless you have suddenly decided to eschew your all-black colour scheme and the comfort of shadows, you are a poor substitute. Edelgard is more eye-catching,” she added, making sure to look said girl in the eye as she said it.

Of course, she only meant by that that a small white-haired girl with a big axe walking like even the trees should be bowing to her who also happened to be the enemy’s commander was rather noticeable in and of itself, but if the currently reddening and sputtering Edelgard was going to take it any other way, well, it was hardly her fault.

Looking to another corner of the room, she caught Dorothea’s grin. An unexpected kindred soul, but theirs was truly the best of pastimes. 

Who would have anticipated that the heir to the Adrestian Empire (and sometimes, she had to stop and contemplate how blasé she was about this, and the company she now kept. She was fairly sure she was supposed to be impressed by all this, but she simply was not) would be such fun to tease, however ?

“Well, if that is all, we will be meeting at the gates at the noon bell. Make sure to pack some rations for the trip if you do not have the time to eat beforehand. But for now, dismissed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is... meh. I didn't struggle on it like I did the previous one, but I didn't particularly enjoy it either. I think it's because I really wanted to write some other later scenes I had in mind recently instead, plus I really want to write that battle, but I felt I'd laid down too many breadcrumbs not to pick up at least a few before diving into it.
> 
> All the students are taking part in the first battle, because I appreciate the need to ease players into the gameplay but no military academy would go out of its way to organise a trip and a team battle royale and then just only have half the students participate, especially when you only have 24 of those in the first place. So instead I paired them up to echo the original intent, at least.
> 
> Jeralt and Rhea have been betting on the beginning-of-year and Eagle and Lion battles for over a century now, so Seteth's hope was thoroughly misplaced. Rhea is leading in correct calls, but Jeralt is ahead on total winnings - he knows when to bet big.
> 
> Henry also being experimented on is 100% non-canon, but I found it fit and even though his hair is technically grey it's always looked white to me so I'm running with it. Micaiah being remembered as white-haired even though she also has grey hair comes from the same misunderstanding. I broke my last pair of glasses something like 7 years ago and haven't replaced them since, in case any of you are wondering.
> 
> If anything else jumps out at you, don't hesitate to hit me in the comments - I usually to reply to all of those, more or less, and I'm very sleepy right now so I might have overlooked a thing or three.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember that time when I did a 10k chapter and then expressed many regrets about it being too long ?
> 
> Well, past me was wiser than now me because here's 12k. Also, because it's so damn long and I've been busier, it's even *less* proofread than usual, so, yeah, warning ahead, but I'm not touching this one again for a little while.
> 
> I really didn't expect this one to turn out that long, which mostly happened because I greatly expanded my original vision for the battle's aftermath. I'm not the happiest with it, but it's out at least ! And now I can do something completely unrelated to this fic for the rest of the week before I even get near to it again !
> 
> Anyway, I hope you still enjoy this, and promise, this is the last big detailed fight for a while - at least until Lonato. Now that we've set just where everybody stands going into canon, I'll be upping the pacing a little !

From atop a rocky outcropping on a nearby hill, Jeralt watched carefully as the students filed out under them and headed to their designated starting positions ; Manuela’s Deers to a dense copse of trees, Hanneman’s Lions to a little neighbouring mound where the ruins of a chapel, or possibly what used to be a small keep, stood, and Byleth’s Eagles to the more sparse, open terrain below it.

The Lions and Deers had a better starting place, but were placed nearer to each other, and were most likely to start fighting first. It was still an advantage, but only if you supposed the two houses were willing to cooperate to take out the easier target, and that the other would not take advantage of an exposed flank. Some years, the two teams which got the position tried anyway, and they were usually both punished for it.

Most likely, Byleth would have to be on the offensive here, as neither of the other teams would be likely to abandon their starting point recklessly, and whoever she attacked first would then be caught in a pincer as the other team took advantage. It would probably be the Lions, he reckoned ; their slightly higher ground would make them a harder target in a one-on-one scenario, and their lack of cover meant it was unlikely they’d be able to set up an ambush.

If the Claude kid was as clever as he liked to think he was, he’d let the two beat each other up before attempting to simultaneously attack both the other teams, rather than focus one. They lacked someone capable of truly leading a charge up the mound if only the Lions remained, and he had to know they wouldn’t beat the Eagles in a fair fight.

And indeed, as he expected, they immediately set up defensive positions in the trees and went to ground, well enough he could not see most of them anymore — only Manuela had stayed back. Reaching their little ruined fort, the Lions went about positioning themselves for maximum visibility of the field of battle, and in a suitable defensive formation, though he was surprised to see the archer kid in the frontline rather than up top. Planning to harass the Eagles then ?

Meanwhile, his kid arrived in her spot, and he eagerly awaited what she’d do. She’d been working herself ragged over her plans for this battle, taking it perhaps a tad more seriously than it deserved, so he was curious to see what she’d cooked up. He saw her students seemingly pair up, and… he didn’t recognise what formation she was going for, it looked simple but…

Robin started laughing uproariously, chastised by a tutting Lucina who was however still observing the scene with a certain amused detachment.

Yeah, she was doing this, he could recognise what this was from miles. All this time spent coming up with a plan, and the best she’d found was apparently _winging it_.

“Please tell me I’m not seeing this,” he groaned, making Robin redouble with laughter.

“I must admit that after seeing how hard your daughter had worked, I had been expecting something a bit more… elaborate,” Seteth admitted, sounding like he was struggling to hold back more scathing commentary.

Much as Jeralt wanted to defend his daughter, he didn’t have much to say to that, so instead he just sighed and let his head fall into his hands.

“Don’t be too hard on the poor girl,” answered Robin. “Most likely, she did have an elaborate plan, but the Eagles are a complete mess, with a completely heterogenous mix of tactical knowledge and battle experience. She probably realised during their planning session that she couldn’t trust them to follow the plan she’d laid down, so instead she just paired them up and will be relying on their individual prowess and her own quick instincts to control battle.”

“Yeah, that’d do it,” Jeralt groaned. “She’s always worked with my mercs, and I’ve always taken on proper professionals. She wouldn’t have anticipated that they weren’t battle ready enough for complex battlefield manoeuvring. Damn, I should have seen that coming.”

Then a sudden realisation came over him.

“Hey,” he smirked his white-haired… colleague ? Sort-of friend-ish ? Drinking buddy ? Yeah, let’s go with that last one. “How much do you think will those two other little lordlings tie themselves up into knots trying to guess at her masterplan ?”

“I can’t wait to see !” was the gleeful response.

* * *

First contact went roughly as they expected. As planned, Ferdinand and her went ahead going towards the hill, immediately drawing the Lions’ attention. Unable to resist the bait, five of them headed down their hill, where they would have had more favourable ground. As the Professor had expected, the urgency of the situation got to them.

Ashe, Mercedes and Annette were the three to stay back, as they’d also correctly called, but she was surprised that they were left without any kind of support whatsoever. It seems the Lions were hoping to blitz through them before the Deer could intervene and avoid a slugfest.

How foolish of them.

Fundamentally, in a five against two, she was not arrogant enough to believe herself the better party in a fight. But she did not need to win ; only to last long enough.

“Five against two, huh ? I suppose it shall be an excellent opportunity to have a little contest, no, Edelgard ? The first to take out three wins.”

“Do not be droll, Ferdinand. We are not here to engage in such tomfoolery,” she reprimanded him, unamused by his antics. “Besides, there are only four of them.”

“Oh, and how do you figure that ?”

As if to answer her, an arrow shot out from the trees to their right, narrowly missing Dedue, sailing right in front of him. It stopped him straight in his tracks, and being the slowest one of the Lions group, he immediately fell behind. It would be troublesome if they grouped up again, so she stepped forward as though preparing to meet the other four halfway.

It worked, and they picked up their pace, leaving Dedue clearly separated. In his suprise, he looked away from the trees again, and if she knew Hubert’s handiwork well — and there was no doubt this was his work — then right about now…

As if on cue, a Miasma spell set out from the trees and struck him by surprise from the side. He was thrown away to her left, but still moving. Not enough to take him out, but he should not be a bother right away. She caught from the corner on her eyes a flash of movement at the border of the trees on the left, meaning the Deer were getting into position already. A bit sooner than planned, but she was already out of time to muse on this.

She stared at Dimitri as Sylvain and Ingrid automatically fanned away to his left, while Felix took his right, looking somehow both eager and… a bit disappointed ? Well, vexing as it was, the less seriously he took this, the better for her.

“Well, Dimitri, come to make good on your boasts ?”

“You are hardly one to talk about boasting, Edelgard ! Coming to meet me head-on like this, you remain as bold as ever !” he challenged, getting into the spirit of the things (with a tinge of overt familiarity she did not recall ever allowing him — honestly, _men_ !).

Good, the more he talked, the more time he wasted.

“Five ? But I see only four of you here,” she smiled, and for the first time Dimitri seemed to realise that Dedue had not followed.

It was only a single moment of distraction, an instant where he took her eyes off her, and she knew that she was supposed to stall for as long as possible.

But in the end, she was not the type a person not to capitalise on her advantages.

In an instant, she was on him, axe raised and solidly aimed at his chest. He reacted quick enough to parry, but it was a clumsy thing, and he left himself open to —

To nothing, because she was forced to swerve away and avoid Felix’s strike.

Fast.

Fast, and she’d forgotten that Dimitri alone was not her opponent. She flicked him a quick glance, but he had recovered his bearings. To her right, Ferdinand had belatedly followed her example, preventing Sylvain and Ingrid from flanking her. He’d still had enough of a surprise element to gain an early advantage, but already Ingrid had regained her footing and she was most likely his match with a spear, from what little she’d seen of the girl. Even if she wasn’t, Sylvain’s presence would tip the balance. He wouldn’t hold for too long.

She’d gotten a bit greedy, it seemed.

No matter, all she had to do was gain some more time.

Once again, she clashed with Dimitri and let herself be pushed away by his frankly ridiculous strength. She’d probably need to lean deep into her Crests to match him, and now was hardly the time to reveal this. Felix pulled forward after her, and an arrow from Bernadetta kept Dimitri from catching up.

Further ahead, she could see Dedue catching up, and still no support from Petra and Caspar. What were they doing ? Was the Professor truly going to leave them stranded ?

Sure, she had been the one to engage rather than stall, but the opportunity had simply been too good not to seize.

As Felix neared, she made a quick decision and turned towards her classmate.

“Ferdinand, switch !” she shouted, and without further ado darted towards him.

Taken by surprise, he managed to catch himself in time to prevent Felix from striking at both their backs, but she couldn’t imagine him holding back Dimitri for long, so she had to be quick.

Taking advantage of Sylvain’s flustered surprise, she caught his lance in the crook of her axe and wrenched it away, finally drawing onto her native Crest. His guard was thrown wide open, and she moved too fast for Ingrid’s thrust to catch her. Getting close to him, she didn’t leave him a chance to dodge — her blow struck right in the head, and he collapsed wincing.

“Guess I’m out early again…” she heard him mutter. “Man, the ladies in this monastery are not worth the trouble…”

Urgh, _men_. Though to be fair, heaping the Gautier heir with the rest of the male population was doing them a disservice.

Such musings had to be abandoned, however, because Ingrid was back at it again and she was forced to turn around and take a step back.

Just in time to see the Dimitri and Felix tag-team catch Ferdinand, and another Miasma spell from Hubert lay down Dedue at last. Felix unfortunately noticed Bernadetta’s latest shot coming and dodged it in time, but it was enough.

With three out of the seven of them out, the Deer could make their move.

It started with a small barrage of arrows — presumably Claude, Ignatz and Leonie. They fell upon the Blue Lions students, one particularly accurate shot nailing Ingrid in the head. Not enough to knock her out, but enough for her to be forced to bow out.

It almost distracted her from the blast of far-too-potent magic that almost struck her, which she avoided at the last second.

Lysithea was there too, then.

As the Deers’ frontline fighters came out of the trees and rushed towards them, she quickly assessed the situation : Dimitri and Felix looked surprised but were already running for her, no doubt aiming to take her out quickly before there could be too much interference, with their own support team apparently coming down to give them cover and be within range of the Deers. This left her rather exposed —

A sharp whistle came from the trees on the other side, where her own team was hidden.

That was the Professor’s signal. With a relieved sigh in her mind, she took off full speed towards them, wincing as a stray arrow and Lysithea’s next spell grazed her on her way. The quicker she got to Linhardt the better. Here was to hoping Dorothea had kept him awake.

* * *

“Lorenz come back you — and there he goes. We really should have seen this coming, huh ?” groaned Leonie, shaking her head as their oh so noble classmate broke formation and ran off for the trees, no doubt eager to face the two House leaders. He’d been openly chafing at their plan, but this was a bit much.

She sincerely doubted Claude or Manuela would be laying down the law, however.

“You really should have,” Hilda answered, sounding far too amused. They’d planned this oh so well, ready to whittle them all down before sending their close-range fighters, but now…

“Well, I suppose we’ll have to make do without him. I was going to switch back to the bow, but I’ll stay with you and Raphael. Circle round their patch of forest then ?”

“Really ? But that’s so far…”

“Well unless you’d rather stay here —”

A Miasma spell sailed straight towards her, which she managed to dodge, but Raphael was hit by an arrow, though it was nothing too grievous. Bernadetta and Hubert then, they’d come into range.

“— and get nailed by that, we can do that too, but the Lions that stayed on the hill are getting in range too you know.”

“Ergh, _fine_ ! I knew I should have forfeited. ‘It’ll be fine’ my sweet, dainty, delicate little behind, Claude !” she shouted back uselessly to the trees they’d come from. “You’ll be making this one up to me ! That tea was not enough fo a bribe to have me running !”

Leonie pondered indulging the girl in her dramatics, but time was of the essence. Also, Raphael had gotten bored and followed after Lorenz. 

Oh dear.

Well, hopefully they’d last long enough for their own pincer to work.

With a swear, she ran off to the opposite side. It wasn’t too late for their plan to catch the Eagles reserve between them and the Lions, but it was getting close.

Although Claude would probably pretend he’d planned this all along.

Smarmy prick. Did anyone on this battlefield even have a clue what they were doing anymore ?

* * *

“They have no idea what they’re doing, do they ?” asked a very entertained Jeralt, which did nothing to better his mood.

“I mean, to be fair I think most of them have an idea of what they’re doing, I just don’t think that any of them would agree on what exactly that is,” Robin offered in what probably passed as a conciliatory tone for him.

It was somewhat ruined by his big grin.

“,… I suppose,” Seteth was forced to admit, “that this would best explain this… performance, yes.”

“I imagine we shall have to be content with the fact that none shall accuse any of our students of lacking enthusiasm,” was Rhea’s altogether unhelpful contribution.

Now that Seteth thought about it, all these new people were proving a bad influence on her professionalism.

Possibly also a bad influence on the Academy, he silently added, watching the Gloucester heir charge alone into an obvious trap while half of the Lions and the Deer just sat back and let their frontline fighters be lured into Eagles territory, instead content with sniping at each other from their respective safe positions.

My, but that Lysithea girl did have remarkable talent. Keeping up at her age through raw talent alone with a Royal Academy valedictorian was no mean feat.

Time to revise the tactics curriculum when they got back, though.

* * *

So focused were Dimitri and Felix on catching up to Edelgard — which they were accomplishing, as she’d picked up a bit of a limp from Lysithea’s last effort at her — that they’d failed to look up, and Petra was glad once again that the Professor had left their means of ambush up to her.

When the Lions had shown up more numerous than expected to hunt down Edelgard and Ferdinand, Professor Byleth had instantly told her to wait for the two to retreat and be ready to ambush any followers, rather than go and assist them.

It had proven wise, as they were too quickly overwhelmed, and Ferdinand taken down sooner than they’d anticipated, but now the Prince and Felix were entering her domain.

The Academy may have made her realise she yet had considerable steps to take on the warrior’s path, but if there was one thing at which she knew she excelled beyond all her peers, it was hunting.

And right now, her prey had entered her range.

Throwing a warning glance at Caspar, whose nervous shuffling on the branches was making unnecessary noise, she tightened her bowstring and slowly took aim at Dimitri as he ran past them. Caspar got ready to jump down.

In utter silence, she stilled her breath, aimed for her quarry’s heart and loosed her arrow. It should have been a perfect hit. She felt it from the moment she released the string.

Except Caspar jumped the gun. She had _warned_ him ! But as he shifted, ready to jump down, the branch he was on cracked, and that was enough to make Dimitri turn back slightly, and her shot hit his right shoulder instead of the left side of his back.

It still obviously hurt, and still took him off balance — Caspar, to his credit, immediately sailed down towards him to finish him off. He wouldn’t have the time to finish the job before Felix struck him down, however, which meant she had to improvise.

This is why it was hard to work with these Fódlani folk. As her tutor was fond of saying, you could take a novice to hunt a bear, but you couldn’t expect to bring back the pelt. And now her clean kill was a mess.

Jumping off soundlessly from her own branch, she nocked an arrow in the same gesture and shot wildly at Felix just as she landed — she would have rather landed on him and grappled him down, but he was a bit too far. Instead, her weak, haphazard shot was decently aimed enough to hit his behind, but nothing more — it likely stung more than anything.

It did, however, buy her and Caspar time, time that Caspar used to clobber Dimitri in the face with surprising enthusiasm and that she used to dash towards Felix. She didn’t have the time to draw her sword fully or close enough to punch him, so instead she went with her instinct and slapped him in the face with her bow. Once again, not much damage, but it kept him off guard and gave her enough time to throw her bow to the side and draw her sword.

Caspar moved to assist her, as Dimitri had finally surrendered, but all the heavy rustle of an unsubtle pursuer caught her hearing instead.

“Caspar, behind us ! Someone is being on their way !”

It wasn’t all logic that dictated her order. As she and Felix finally prepared to meet, she readily admitted to a desire to test her newfound understanding of the sword against someone she could compare herself to.

Of course, she had sparred with her classmates, but none of them favoured the sword, and Professors Byleth, Lucina and Jeritza were all too skilled to give her a good idea of her level. Felix, however, had a reputation as the best swordsman of their lot of students, and, having seen him train, she would wager it was merited.

There was a definite eagerness to her movements as her first strike aimed for his neck, and if she was too disciplined to smile, so what ? Her opponent was grinning enough for the of them.

Well, smirking. It was still Felix, after all.

* * *

Felix had not been enjoying this whole mock battle.

First, he’d barely even had a chance to fight that Edelgard girl before she’d switched with Ferdinand, and _that_ had already been unsatisfying enough, having to share with the boar. Then Ferdinand had proven no match for the two of them, the Deers had ambushed them, and the Eagles’ leader had just up and run on them. The boar had no doubt run after her because he was a single-minded, battle-hungry creature, but he’d followed him into the obvious trap because he figured he had more luck of getting a good fight there.

Then they got into the trees and the boar was shot in the back.

When he saw Caspar jump down from the trees — _the trees !_ — and begin to wail on Dimitri, he immediately went to help (cathartic as the sight may have been). That had been a mistake — he should have accounted for the as-yet-unseen archer. Fortunately, Petra’s second shot (because he could only think of one archer in the Eagles sneaky enough for this) had been weak, likely rushed, and on account of the blunt arrow barely did anything to him other than bruise his ass. No grounds for surrendering, that was, so instead he turned back and got ready to strike her down.

She seemed a good fighter, so it was a shame she’d gone with a bow — that could have been an enjoyable fight, maybe.

He immediately revised his opinion of her upwards when instants after having turned to face her she whacked him in the face with her bow.

Well, that was new.

And _interesting_.

From behind her, he could see Lorenz catching up, but thankfully she sent Caspar to deal with him. Now he could have himself a nice fight at last.

That minute distraction almost instantly caused his defeat, as she went straight for his neck. He parried it in time, if only barely, but it put him straight on the back foot.

He couldn’t help it.

He smiled, and lashed out with all his ferocity.

As though she’d anticipated it, she effortlessly dodged, and went with a strike that would have all but lopped off his shoulder had they been using real swords.

He blocked it, again, just in time, and was pushed back for his trouble. Relentlessly, she chained together a series of fast, precise hits that he could only do his best to barely block or avoid. It didn’t take long for him to find the traces of Professor Lucina’s work there. She wasn’t trying to emulate their teacher exactly, as she eschewed contests of strength their teacher would not bat an eye at, but it was clear she had been picking up things from her.

Infuriatingly, it was working. He could see it in her movements, in her posture, in her footwork, her grip : she wasn’t as good as him when it came to pure technique. But she made up for it in raw speed and dexterity, as well as unshakeable focus, and _it was working_. If they had been using live steel, he would have already gained a few cuts on his arms, when he hadn’t been fast enough to pull away.

He might have been better, but she was not leaving him any time to focus and now he’d found himself completely stuck in her rhythm. He winced as another attempt at a block saw his left biceps punished.

He felt the familiar frustration build up within him. He tried a rash counter, and felt a new bruise on his right forearm for his trouble.

This time, however, he thought back to his recent humiliating defeats at the hands of his teachers, and as he watched her step in for a final blow to his wide open chest, seized ahold of his anger, and channeled it into his right leg.

Because much like Professor Byleth had noticed when he’d done the same to her, in order to deliver her finishing blow, she’d unbalanced herself.

So he kicked her in the knee.

With a sharp little cry she lost her balance and fell on her side. Clearly more trained in this than he’d been, she was already rolling away as soon as she hit the floor, and his sloppy counter missed her, but it gave him the breather he’d needed and the opening he’d wanted.

So foregoing technique and precision, he just darted towards her and swung his sword as strongly as he could. She’d not regained her footing well enough yet to dodge, so she attempted a parry instead, which he effortlessly blew through. By avoiding pitting their raw physical might against each other, she’d all but signposted her weakness. His blow pushed her back, and he noticed a wince when she was forced to quickly put her weight on her right foot.

Good, he’d messed with her knee then. That would slow down her footwork.

And now, instead of letting her back into her own tempo, he made sure to go for big, strong strikes that broke any rhythm their bout previously had. After a few of these exchanges, she got noticeably sloppier, and her grimace grew more strained every time she shifted her knee too suddenly — and he made sure to force her into straining it as much as possible. Her last dodge was fast enough to avoid his sword, but not far enough to get far away from him, so with a free hand he caught her with a quick punch to her lower rib cage. He’d aimed for the gut to wind her, but she’d seen him just in time. 

Nonetheless, she winced and folded slightly into herself. He adjusted his weight distribution perfectly for a finishing blow.

It was an instant of vanity, he realised as soon as he began to shift position. He could have struck without doing this, but it would not have been as clean, the chances not perfect.

Seeing the tiny opening, the tiny relaxation of his muscles, she lashed out. Her blade hit his sword arm right in the crook of his elbow, and he dropped his weapon at the surprise pain.

Then, with another step (and another grimace of pain — he’d grant her that much, the girl was tough) she closed him on in, and went for his neck.

When he’d had his lesson with Robin, he’d been thoroughly underwhelmed. The man had agreed easily enough, and they’d sparred. While he was more skilled than Felix had expected, his skillset was very much utilitarian, much like Byleth’s. There was skill, certainly, and a wealth of experience which spoke in his movements, but there had been no insights into something new, nothing unexpected.

When he’d confronted him about it and told him he was supposed to learn something about fighting from him, the infuriating man had just smiled his cheery smile and told him that ‘No, you asked for me to teach you how to use a sword. But now you’re asking the right question !’, before leading him back to the centre of the training grounds.

He’d struck at him once, locked their blades, then put his free hand on his chest and blasted him away with a Wind spell. Then told him to get up, and did it again. The third time, he’d seen it coming, and stepped back. Instead of hitting him point blank, the spell had to travel a few feet. This did not change the result much.

Then proceeded thirty minutes of a straight beatdown, during which he realised that : a) Professor Robin was a much better fighter than he’d anticipated and b) that to him, a sword was just a weapon versatile enough to keep his opponent occupied and lead his opponents where he wanted them to be while still letting him keep a free hand. Which he would then use to cast magic at you with considerable prejudice.

The man was a goddess-damned Mortal Savant, and not your average one, if such a thing as an average Mortal Savant could be said to exist. Of course, when he’d asked, he’d just gotten a pretend-confused look and a ‘nonsense, I’m just a tactician’, but he knew what he’d seen.

That little lesson had finally driven home Lucina and Byleth’s points, about his own pride and Robin’s readiness to achieve victory whatever the situation. As soon as he’d stopped making this about swords and instead about fighting, Robin had always gone for the quickest, most efficient route towards beating him.

When he kept away, he got Thundered for his trouble. When he came close, he got locked in a parry and then launched away by Wind. When he focused on his footwork, Robin set fire to the ground under him. In the end, unlike when they kept to their swords, he was forced to concede without ever having come close to even unsettling the man. Because Robin just focused on doing what worked.

If he was remembering all this now, it was because he saw it : that fleeting instant where Petra, still slowed by her injury, still a bit rattled, was open.

It was also because if he realised then that he wasn’t quite as ready to discard his pride as he had thought, this was the precise moment he understood it.

In the time before, back when the Boar was still a human being and Rodrigue still his father, he’d shown an affinity for Thunder magic. Rodrigue had been overjoyed, and begun tutoring him with gusto — but it had only been a few months before Glenn’s death.

He’d not so much as lit a spark since.

And in the instant he saw that opening in Petra’s guard, where he realised that he still had a free hand, he instinctively tried to copy Robin’s move. But he hesitated, a flash of his father — Rodrigue’s face superimposing itself over his vision and making his arm stutter. He lost precious instants looking at his sword, wondering if he couldn’t counter with it instead despite Reason being the superior option. 

And then, when he finally forced himself to make the decision, his lack of practice meant he was too slow in his execution.

Sparks cracked around his left hand and Petra’s training sword nailed him in the face, knocking him to the ground.

They both stood still for some time, each of them having come out the worse for wear, catching their breaths as her sword came to rest on his throat.

Mentally shaken as he was, he couldn’t help but think that she had very nice legs. Also that her face was blurry. Damn, a concussion ? That would explain this loopy feeling in his head.

“… Next time, I’ll win.”

It was as close as he was willing to come to conceding.

“I will be being in expectation of our rematch, then,” she nodded at him, before limping off towards where Edelgard had headed, which meant their healer probably was there.

He laid on the ground for a few seconds more, before forcing himself up and heading out of the grounds for healing, struggling to walk in a straight line. Yep, she’d definitely rung his head like a bell. Lorenz was passed out in front of him, and he was just in time to see Raphael bring down the scrappy Bergliez.

Only to take an arrow to the head and a Miasma for good measure from further in the trees, also bringing him down.

They’d been well and truly had, hadn’t they ?

Well, that wasn’t any of his business.

He got his fight, and maybe it was the head injury, but that was enough to put him in a good mood.

At least until he remembered he lost.

* * *

Hilda knew they’d lost the moment she spotted a vulnerable Linhardt healing Edelgard. They’d rounded around the trees, as planned, arrived behind the Eagles, as planned, and caught their healer isolated, also as planned.

The moment she saw Leonie charge ahead to capitalise on their advantage, she understood they’d been had. But she couldn’t tell _why_ she got the feeling. It took her a precious few instants too long to figure it out in time to let her warn Leonie.

Edelgard and Ferdinand had been in a pair. Hubert and Bernadetta had been in a pair. Linhardt wasn’t. And they’d not seen hide nor hair of Petra, Dorothea and Caspar yet. And why had Edelgard drawn the other teams towards them if they had such an easily exposed position ?

A Thunder spell sailed from a bush straight into Leonie, who didn’t take it very gracefully and fell over with a series of highly unpleasant swears, muscles wracked with involuntary twitches.

Dorothea, then.

Linhardt hadn’t even looked up from where he was patching a purpling bruise on Edelgard’s flank she could see through a tear in her uniform — probably a little souvenir of Lysithea’s effort from earlier. And Goddess, but the girl was pale under the layer of clothing she always covered in. Did she ever see the sun before coming here ?

Well, she was alone against three, and had distance to cover to reach them. Dorothea and presumably Linhardt could reach her at range, though she’d never seen him even try to fight remotely seriously.

She liked Linhardt. Linhardt was a comrade-in-suffering.

She could surrender just now. She wasn’t going to win this anyway, but it _would_ annoy Manuela — which was acceptable — and she wouldn’t hear the end of it from Lorenz or Leonie — which was annoying but nothing she couldn’t deal with.

But Claude and little Lys had worked hard to come up with their plan, no matter how much the former pretended otherwise, and it would disappoint the two of them if she just abandoned ship now.

Were she not the sort to practice self-awareness, she might have been surprised to realise she wanted that even _less_ than she wanted to get involved in this.

But all she could do was run at the only two she could see — Edelgard and Linhardt — and hope that she could hit one of them before Dorothea got her, and that was assuming both of them just stood there and did nothing.

So it was do nothing and feel bad, or get hurt for no gain whatsoever.

Urgh, ethical dilemmas were not her forte.

It was a stray thought of a disappointed Claude that granted her a third way out.

He’d jumped on the opportunity to have a one-on-one session with Professor Lucina, and come out a little haggard and, surprisingly enough, slightly chastened. And in the words Lucina had told him, she found an acceptable compromise.

Because she may be a delicate maiden at heart, but she very much knew her strength — and after all, much like lances, any axe is a hand axe if you throw it hard enough.

She took one step forward to build up momentum, reared her weapon back, aimed at Linhardt’s back (he still hadn’t turned — poor boy, she’d have to make it up to him sometime. Her comrade in class-skipping deserved better) and with a heave and a cry sent her axe sailing towards him.

Edelgard’s eyes widened when she noticed what she was doing, but barely had the time to open her mouth before her weapon nailed him in the back of the head, knocking him straight out. Well, in a way she’d at least granted him a nap ?

She heard the distinct cracking of a Thunder spell being readied, and there was only one thing left to do.

“I surrender !” she smiled brightly, raising her hands in the air.

And now that she saw it, that look of flustered anger and confusion on Edelgard’s face wasn’t bad at all ! Completely worth it !

“Hilda… What the fuck ?” Leonie asked next to her, but she paid it no heed.

Mission accomplished !

* * *

From the moment they saw Hilda and Leonie walk out of the forest, carrying Linhardt along, the coins began changing hands. Even seeing Petra walk out too soon after, victorious but too injured to proceed without healing did not deter the near-certainty which had taken hold of them : the Eagles had this one in the bag.

Jeralt smirked. He’d owe his girl one.

Funnily enough, it was Hanneman who’d won them the battle.

In the ranged battle between his students and Manuela’s, the Deers’ numerical advantage had begun to pay off : Being stuck on both offensive and healing duties, Mercedes was all but running on fumes, and Annette was beginning to get sloppier in her casting, whereas Lysithea seemed indefatigable, at least as far as mana was concerned. Ashe was a better archer than Ignatz, but Claude was his better, and unlike them the Deers had Marianne as dedicated healer.

So Hanneman decided this was clearly a sign that the time had come for him to intervene, and surprised everyone with a Sagittae that knocked Ignatz straight out. Manuela jumped at the opportunity to show him up, and joined Marianne in healing duties.

The two houses could have stayed caught in this little stalemate, but in getting involved they’d given Byleth her cue to join the fray.

The rest happened surprisingly fast. Edelgard, Dorothea and Byleth ran from the cover of their trees towards the Deers group. Both of the others noticed, but worried as they were about the other house taking advantage of any distraction in their current ranged battle hesitated to switch targets, hoping the other would move first.

Claude was the first to understand what was going to happen, and to his credit he opened his mouth immediately to presumably give out some order.

Byleth’s Thunder spell struck him square in the chest too early for him to get the first word out.

“I taught her that !” Robin crowed next to him, which while annoying and a slight deformation of the truth wasn’t _wrong_. 

The first time they’d traveled together on that merchant caravan months ago, they’d had a discussion about the magic best-suited for battlefield control and were subsequently forced to endure a long, thorough lecture on the utility of thunder-family spells in taking out enemy commanders and figureheads. By had always preferred fire-family when she had to use Reason, but she’d been persuaded enough to at least learn the basic Thunder, and it’d become a common tool in her arsenal since.

This led to a panic amongst the last remaining Deers, which wasn’t punished by the Lions because they hadn’t been able to.

Using the distraction provided by their classmates, Hubert and Bernadetta had flanked the hill and ambushed Hanneman, dispatching him pretty quickly before taking the remaining students from Faerghus by surprise. From there, between Mercedes and Annette’s exhaustion, the surprise effect and the higher ground, the two Eagles made quick work of their opposition.

Lysithea did try to stop the advancing Eagles all at once with… what looked to be one ambitious big spell, though judging by the time it took not one she was particularly comfortable with —

(“I also taught her that !” Robin bounced happily, before looking crestfallen as his hopes to show off by proxy were shattered)

— which she never got to fire because in the time it took for her to work it, the Dorothea girl had cast a quick Fire which had set the grass under her aflame and sufficiently distracted her to break her concentration.

From that point on, it was too late. Byleth was the first to reach them, and Manuela looked eager to cross swords for about three seconds before she realised she was outmatched. Thirteen seconds later, his daughter forced the songstress to execute her fancy footwork on a patch of mud where she lost her balance — and was immediately punished by Byleth for her mistake. Meanwhile, Edelgard had dispatched Lysithea handily and Marianne had barely even tried to fight Dorothea, even though they both had swords out.

At a nod from Rhea, Seteth blew the horn signal announcing a Black Eagles victory, and an assortment of cheers and jeers rose from the knights.

Jeralt smiled.

It wasn’t everyday that he got to be a proud parent, a winning gambler and a satisfied teacher at the same time.

As Rhea gave him a little amused side-eye, knowing no doubt exactly what was going through his mind, he even found the whole thing pretty nostalgic.

* * *

The little feast they’d thrown in celebration of their victory had been surprisingly enjoyable, all things told. When buoyed by sufficiently good news, she was surprised to find the mood within her house more agreeable than usual.

Ferdinand was a mix of cheery from the good news, and subdued from his own unremarkable showing, which made him a much better table companion than he’d ever showed himself to be — even Dorothea seemed to find him tolerable.

The songstress had hardly had to exert herself for the entire battle, and come out of it entirely immaculate despite her sizeable contribution. Her good mood at the cheer and the fact she’d not had to get stuck into a proper fight was contagious, and she’d taken it upon herself to keep Petra from cutting herself off from the conversation.

The Brigid princess had a tendency to retreat from the group when conversations got harder to follow, but between Dorothea’s efforts to keep her involved and her own quiet contentment at besting Felix (and no matter how humbly she downplayed her performance, it was still an impressive feat — the Fraldarius heir was among the best of their generation, and arguably a solid contender for _the_ best), they collectively discovered she was possessed of surprisingly cutting wit when not too hampered by the language barrier, on top of being generally pleasantly down to earth.

Caspar was in his element, excitedly recounting his own highlights and incessantly questioning others on how their fights went — and for once, he’d actually certainly contributed enough for this to be more than empty boasting, taking out Dimitri, Lorenz and holding off Raphael long enough for Hubert and Bernadetta to take him down.

Speaking of those two, they’d even smiled ! Once, briefly in her retainer’s case, but she could read the quiet contentment in his features as the self-satisfaction it was.

Linhardt had remained awake, and Bernadetta… had attended, which was progress, right ? She’d not even fainted until the _third_ time Hubert had talked to her !

For the first time since they’d all been assembled, she had felt that beyond potential allies to cultivate, her house could also be… friends. Potentially.

And she knew who to thank for this. Professor Byleth had sat with them quietly at their insistence, not actively participating in conversation but listening in that silent attentive way of hers, her presence automatically soothing their rowdier members and putting their more… antisocial ones at ease.

A warning gaze to a Linhardt whose eyes were closing here, a reassuring nod to Bernadetta there, a small frown to quell a competitive Ferdinand, and they all fell into order.

In truth, much as she admired her teacher’s effortless capacity for leadership, she was somewhat envious of it. She knew that she hadn’t even tried to bring their group together, so much as bring them to heel, but a part of her wished she could have generated this companionship as easily as Byleth had.

Because a quick glance at the other tables had shown her fast enough that Professor Manuela and Professor Hanneman had not managed the same : the Deers had been good sports about it and even joined them for a time in celebrating, which while nice enough had meant she had to be subjected to Claude and Hilda’s comedy routine — and now that she’d seen the girl’s brain at work, she knew it for what it was. Ditzy slacker she might pretend to be, but she’d immediately recognised their trap, identified what actions she could plausibly take to maximise her gains and then surrendered, smiling smugly at them in the knowledge that she’d dealt them their hardest, least expected blow of the entire battle and gotten away with it cleanly.

Also, it meant they had to deal with Lorenz’s… everything, but the collective warning he received when he tried to grant Petra the honour of his company was thankfully clear enough to get him to back off. Besides, the Deer seemed just as put up with him.

The Lions, meanwhile had sat morosely together, keeping to themselves as they despondently gathered after offering them courtesy congratulations. Only Mercedes and Annette had joined them for a while, but eventually dodged out in an attempt to go cheer up their house.

Nonetheless, only her Eagles remained now in the Hall, and as the mood winded down, they slowly began to gather themselves up and leave (and, in Caspar’s case, gather up Linhardt and leave — their sleepy classmate had finally succumbed to the call of nap time), until only the professor, herself and Hubert remained.

As they all got up to leave, she was surprised to hear her teacher’s voice interrupt her.

“Edelgard, a moment if you would ?”

“Of course, my teacher. What is the matter ?”

“Before you retire for the night, could you come with me to town for a little while ?”

She immediately stamped down the girlish part of her which squealed in equal parts embarrassed terror and gleeful anticipation. Now was _not_ the time for such foolishness.

(Well, it was never the time for such foolishness, but she tried not to remind herself of _that_ too often. She had enough things sapping away at her will as is.)

Next to her, Hubert tensed.

“And why might you require Lady Edelgard’s presence at such a late hour ?”

The Professor did her Head Tilt and she tried to steel herself. The Head Tilt always announced she was about to say something outrageous, which usually succeeded in completely embarrassing her. Well not this time !

(Was she acting a bit childish ? She’d not had much wine, but it had been a _long_ time since she’d even partaken in drink at all. Perhaps that was it ?)

“Nothing, really. I just thought I’d invite her out for a drink,” Byleth declared, and her earnest look (and that damnable little teasing spark in her eyes, she could see it now ! Finally she was getting somewhat of a read on her !) undid all her efforts.

She choked on whatever pre-made reply she’d been preparing and felt a massive blush rise to her cheeks as she tried to stammer out an answer.

“Wh—what are you s—saying, Professor ? I know you enjoy your jokes, but please do not go around saying such things !”

“And might I suggest you watch your tone when addressing Lady Edelgard ? Some might take… umbrage to your overt familiarity,” Hubert intervened, more menacingly than she felt the situation deserved, but, well, he would not be Hubert otherwise.

He, however, was no match for their teacher.

“Why ?” she asked with an unbearably innocent expression. “Is there a reason Edelgard should fear being alone with me at night ?”

“That— that is… You know full well what you are doing !” her retainer accused, and she rather traitorously enjoyed seeing someone else on the stuttering end of this for once.

Thankfully for them, Byleth simply shook her head a little, as if to regain her serious, and elaborated on what she actually meant.

“My father, Robin, Lucina and myself often go for a drink at this time. As, unlike me, they were observing the whole battle and are all consummate soldiers in their own right, we figured they would offer you, Claude and Dimitri a chance to come along and ask for their opinions on your performances. Besides, you will often have to work with three of them over the course of the year, I suggest you take the opportunity to get to know them in a more relaxed setting. Would you be interested in coming along ?”

Calming herself done, she considered the matter carefully. A part of her screamed at her to stay well clear of this, if only to avoid the company of their aggravatingly inscrutable white-haired teacher and the attention of the captain of the Knights of Seiros.

But her practical side won over it, highlighting the no doubt useful analysis of the battle she would be able to receive. Not to mention, she _was_ curious to see what a more informal Byleth and Lucina might act like. Enough to suffer Claude’s company and Dimitri’s misery ?

Yes, she decided.

With a nod to her teacher, she gave her assent. Hubert looked a bit disgruntled, but he had work to do.

It wasn’t her fault this happened just as she had to meet with Solon. If he had to go in her place, well, that truly could only be bad luck, couldn’t it ?

* * *

They weaved through the streets of the monastery’s small town, with a practiced ease which spoke to a certain regularity in Byleth’s visits. Talk was kept to a minimum on their way there, but, well, she’d expected nothing less from the least loquacious person she’d ever met. Still, she’d at least wrangled out an explanation that the tavern was captain Jeralt’s favourite haunt from his previous stint working for the Church, and a warning not to try the ale if she had been raised with a noble palate.

They pushed the door open, and it immediately became apparent they were the last to arrive. Immediately, because the table they headed to was by far the loudest in the modestly packed building, in thanks due to a pair of annoying cackling voices she immediately dreaded having to sit with.

She recognised the first one as Robin’s, but the second was one she wasn’t familiar with.

Taking a better look at the table, the first thing that jumped out at her was Dimitri, looking completely out of place as he awkwardly shuffled between Jeralt and Lucina, until the latter quelled him down with a hand on his shoulder and an encouraging smile. Their combat instructor looked more… relaxed ? Was that the correct word ? Significantly more at ease anyhow than she’d ever seen her, nursing a cup of wine with a small smile as she subtly leaned against Robin. It was tiny, as far as physical contact went, but it evoked a quiet comfort that truly drove in the fact that the two were lovers — something everyone knew, considering Robin was not shy in saying it and they roomed together, but none of the students had ever truly caught them in anything even resembling an indecent position.

Opposite Robin, Claude was in the middle of agitatedly telling a story, which seemed to have been the reason for the laughs. He looked more at ease than she’d have expected with this group, but Hubert _had_ told her that he’d spent more alone time than most with Robin, and more importantly was apparently now a frequent customer of their merchant friend.

Which meant that the red-haired woman with the _other_ annoying laugh must have been said merchant. Anna, if she recalled the name right. She looked roughly as Hubert had described her : that is, like a traveling merchant. Young and passably pretty, sturdy but practical clothes, long red hair in a ponytail.

What she hadn’t expected from Hubert’s report was her easy banter with… Clo-clo (what ?), because apparently that was a thing, and the obvious flirtatious look she saw her send Jeralt across the table.

Why did she decide to come here in the first place ?

Nonetheless, she brushed aside her reservations and sat along at the table with her teacher.

“And the women of the hour of arrive,” captain Jeralt saluted them, raising his mug in greetings. “Settle down and let me flag you both a drink, courtesy of Alois. Skinned him out of all his purse in the wagers !”

“And another one on me !” echoed Anna (?) after him. “I made a killing fixing bets for the Knights today, so I’m feeling like indulging in a little profligacy for my benefactors ! Anything extra after that’ll cost ya, though,” she winked at them.

Edelgard had no clue how to respond to that, so she simply took a cue from Byleth’s impassive nod and thanks.

There was a little quiet chatter as Claude continued his story and they waited for their drinks to arrive — wine for her. She’d remembered Byleth’s warning, and a quick sniff of the mug that passed in front of her told her she’d probably made the right decision. How were Claude and Dimitri _drinking_ this ?

Respectively like a man who’d taken worse to fight off the cold of a winter night in Fhirdiad and like a man who’d done this his whole life, it appeared, but that was neither here nor there.

At least professor Lucina was also drinking something reasonable.

Now that they were all settled in, there was a little lull in the conversation, before Robin’s voice cut through it.

“So, which one of you kids wants to go first ?”

_That_ threw a little cold on the merriment, though Claude picked himself up quickly and Dimitri and herself seemed to be the only ones truly shaken. Though… she still had trouble reading her professor, but had she just thrown something approximating the idea of a nervous glance at her father ?

Professor Byleth had _weak spots_?

She stored that aside for her inevitable future revenge.

In the end, seeing her hesitation and Dimitri’s flinch, it was Claude who stepped up to the task.

“Well, fire away, professors — though preferably not literally this time, eh, Teach ?” he winked breezily at Byleth, sending a little tremor of unexpected jealousy through her body.

So what if she didn’t have his easy charm ? Byleth was their professor, and they weren’t trading.

She had to hand it to him, though, he sure could make the cheesy lines look good.

“Well, as the old veteran here, I guess I’ll go first,” announced Jeralt. “I get being flighty and fun looks to be your thing, from what Leonie said, but if you don’t get a grip on your troops you’ll go nowhere fast. I get it’s early days and there’s some teething issues, but whatever you may disagree about off the field, once you’re there that Gloucester kid should be listening to you, no questions asked. And while I can’t blame you if he’s testing his limits, at some point you’ve got to lay down the law or you’ll lose your troops. That Raphael kid shouldn’t have run off either. Also, looks to me like you’ve got no second on the field, and you’re gonna need to have someone who can take charge and understand what you want when you’re not around.”

“Yeah, that’s… fair, Lorenz is a work in progress. And Raphael… didn’t really get the whole plan in the first place, so when he arrived at a point where he wasn’t sure what to do, he just went with whatever was simplest. Not our greatest moment,” he admitted. “And I did have seconds ! Hilda and Lysithea ! It’s just that, well, Lysithea was a great help with the strategising off the field, but I didn’t anticipate that once we got there her head would be full of nothing but spells. And Hilda has got the brains and the instinct, it’s just that she’s a bit of a work in progress in the motivation department. I’m sure she’d try harder if there was something actually tangible on the line though !”

“Hmm… Fair, I’ll take that, but if this shit happens again it’ll be on your head,” Jeralt shrugged. “Anyone else ?”

Lucina raised her glass, swallowing her last gulp before picking up after him.

“When you strike, commit yourself to the blow. It is fine to vie for tactical control of the battlefield, but you must know when to be decisive. When the Eagles and Lions were fighting, you struck at both. Had your pincer gone as I am assuming it was supposed to, you would have been letting the Eagles and Lions exhaust themselves before catching them both, again. At both of these moments, you could have struck a decisive blow to one of the other teams instead, but by seeking to maintain control of the whole battlefield, you blunted your attacks. When the Eagles and Lions were fighting in the centre, your entire forces could have taken the hill quite easily — and it would have only been moderately harder after Dimitri and Felix ran after the Eagles. At both times, you could have taken the Lions out of commission, but by seeking a perfect blow, you ended up harming neither enough to secure your position.”

He winced at that. It was odd, seeing her carefree fellow Leader not let any kind of criticism effortlessly slide off him. It made him a little more human, and a little less annoying, if only barely so.

“Yeah, that’s fair, Teach. Although if Lorenz hadn’t run off, I still think it could have worked,” he grumbled a little petulantly.

“It could have, but it didn’t — that’s what we’re telling you,” Robin smiled as he butted in. “You weren’t wrong to try and go for a best case scenario, but that’s my little bit of advice, from one tactician to another : sometimes a complex plan with moving parts is just plain worse than dumb muscle. Know when to try and be clever, and when to keep it stupid. When Lorenz and Raphael ran off, there were three possible options : keep to the plan, follow them or regroup and take the hill at six versus three. Leonie and Hilda chose the worst one possible, because the plan was already done with. You didn’t have the numbers to storm through their backline anymore, and from what I hear the only reason you even got poor Linhardt was thanks to an individual exploit on Hilda’s part. If they had followed the other two, you could have caught Dimitri and Felix between you and the Eagles and arguably power through them through momentum and superior numbers, forest ambushes put aside. Instead, Caspar got the opportunity to fight Lorenz and Raphael one-on-one. You get me ?”

“Yeah,” he winced. “Yeah, I got it. Thanks, Prof.”

“Well, don’t take it too badly, you didn’t do too bad. Still the worst out of the three, but it wasn’t a bad showing.”

At this, Dimitri, who had been deep in thought so far, broke out of his gloom to interject.

“Truly ? I would have thought the worst performance here would be by my own House ? We were the first to be wiped out, and had the most early losses on top of that.”

It was a bit jarring to see him so lacking in pride at his own performance, which had hardly been a horror show, but she did find herself broadly agreeing.

“The Deer _have_ to get the lowest mark,” Jeralt explained, “because they grasped control of the flow of the battle, and instead of maintaining it let the Eagles seize it back.”

“The onus was on Claude and his classmates to maintain the momentum of their first attack, but instead their front line split up and their back line was happy to try and stall out the remaining Lions, meaning they ceded the initiative almost immediately. For a plan that relied on controlling the battlefield, that was the worst possible mistake.”

“Oh, I see,” commented the prince of Faerghus. “Then, might I ask how you rate the Blue Lions’ performance ? I would be grateful to hear your insights.”

“Oh me, me ! I’ll take first turn !” Robin nattered excitedly, before barelling ahead without waiting for an answer. “Gotta say, I liked your guts — I was expecting something way more boring from your knightly lot, but just going “whatever, let’s spring the trap” was surprisingly refreshing ! My own biases towards shock and awe aside, though, it was probably your best call. Edelgard and Ferdinand were obviously bait, but as the ones with the best starting position, the risk the other two would just target you first was too high, and by committing five of you to the offence you actually took the Eagles by surprise — I’d wager that they’d have been in a bit of a pickle had the Deer not intervened.”

“Your first mistake was actually much the same as Claude’s,” Lucina picked up. “You did not commit fully to either a defensive or offensive strategy. Your backline could do little else other than stall an attack on your hill, and your frontline was not enough to take on both houses at once. You should have leaned more solidly either way. I personally would still have chanced a well-organised defence…”

“But I say you should have just dropped the hill altogether — at that point, with more than half of you forward, it was dead weight and you had no instructions to keep it. Having your ranged units with you would have let you pin Edelgard in place after she ran off, and given you ways to contain ranged attacks from the other two houses. Even in your daring you were a little too cautious. Still, not bad !”

“I see… It is true that I felt too uncertain in our capacity to defend the hill, and yet still obliged to leave some of us there when we went on the offensive… I thought that I was taking a balanced approach, but it was not a choice so much as a manifestation of my uncertainty…”

“A harsh way to put it — any young commander must learn to find where they draw the line between prudence and hesitation,” Lucina admonished kindly, and it did not escape Edelgard that the woman had taken a softer tone with him throughout this.

It was as Hubert had suggested then ; she had a soft spot for the Lions. One apparently not shared by Robin, interestingly enough. Speaking of those two, however, something niggled at the back of her mind.

“Forgive me for interrupting,” she butted in, “but I am surprised to hear you advocating such a preference for… ‘shock and awe’, as you put it, sir Robin. I had thought that as a tactician, you would have perhaps preferred Claude’s approach.”

Unexpectedly, Lucina gave an uncharacteristic snort in answer, echoed by the merchant and a small guffaw from Jeralt.

“I mean he’s a twisty kind alright,” Byleth’s father explained, “but we’ve had the opportunity to talk tactics before and… Well, out of the four of us here who’ve actually led troops in combat, if you asked me to rank which one was the most aggressive, I’d definitely say it’s him.”

Lucina nodded in confirmation at this.

“It’s true. As tactician of the Shepherds — Ylisse’s most elite cadre of knights, after the remaining Pegasus knights were folded into it — he had earned considerable credit, but after my father took up the mantle of Exalt and added Robin to the war council of the Alliance Army, the reactionary war we had so far been fighting against Plegia was suddenly turned into an all-out offence which did not stop until King Gangrel was slain in the ruins of Altea, deep in Plegian territory. Afterwards, during the Valmese campaign, despite our armies being utterly dwarfed in size by Walhart the Conqueror’s, I do not recall us fighting a single defensive battle despite the odds.”

“Aw, you flatter me, Luci. But what about the fight against Yen’fay ?”

“While we did lure him out to our chosen battleground, once there it was our own vanguard which charged his army, not the opposite.”

“True, I guess I can confess to that,” he conceded amiably.

In the privacy of her mind, Edelgard’s brain was working on full power. This was really not what she would have expected of the shifty nuisance… But if it was true, then perhaps it could shed light on some of his behaviour thus far.

She’d assumed his tendency to blithely trample over tense situations to be born of arrogance and whimsy both, but if he was truly someone who preferred to have the first strike at all times, then all these times he’d just blatantly called her out… was him setting his preferred rules of engagement ?

She made a mental note to ask Hubert later, before returning to the conversation as she heard her name pronounced.

“… You with us, kid ?” asked captain Jeralt. “It’s your turn on the grill now.”

How embarrassing — she’d forgotten why she’d come here in the first place.

“Oh, my apologies, it was a momentary distraction. By all means, proceed.”

“Huh — well, whatever you say,” he answered in a dubious tone. “I’ll take first criticism, because the big one’s not actually for you but for my daughter.”

Wait, really ? Turning to look at her teacher, the part of her which was constantly mortified by her teacher’s teasing was gleeful to notice that she seemed… well, she seemed like nothing in particular, but for an instant she could have sworn she saw the shadow of a wince cross her features.

_It really was a weak spot ?_

She eagerly turned her attention back to Byleth’s father, not willing to miss a drop of this.

“… I told you so.”

Mulish silence was his only answer (and just when had she managed to read her silences enough to tell them apart ?).

“Did I not tell you that you shouldn’t work on your plans all on your own without consulting anyone, not even other teachers, your own students or your poor dear old father who’s been doing this for decades ?”

(Decades ? How old was he ? He barely looked into his fourties, but then again surely Byleth had to be at least twenty, and he’d already risen to Captain of the Knights prior to having her…)

“… You did.”

“And you ignored my warnings, did it anyway, and then had to get rid of all of it because you failed to account for the fact that you weren’t leading seasoned mercenaries this time around ? Even after I spent so long drilling into you the importance of having people poke holes at your plans ?”

“… Yes,” was the professor’s despondent answer — and she could tell it was despondent because her teacher actually physically reacted to it, if only minutely.

“Oh, lay off the poor girl, Jeralt, she did well enough to catch up, and we’re here for the kids anyway, not Byleth,” Robin snorted, before turning to her. “Well, first things first, I’m not going to pretend that your little bait plan didn’t work, but keep in mind that in a real battle, you would be the commander of these troops — that doesn’t mean you can’t take risks, but a plan which includes all but guaranteed losses such as this is far less easy to justify when the consequence of failure is death and not disqualification. You played to the rules of the engagement, but don’t get used to it.”

Yes, she supposed that was fair. It had been hard to take this fight particularly seriously — only her desire to cement her dominance and attempt to unite her house a little had let her invest actual energy and effort into this.

“Also, you’re a natural leader, I’ll grant you that, but now that you know how to lead you’re going to need to learn to make others follow. Twice you acted when Ferdinand wasn’t ready, and twice you put him at a disadvantage by doing so. When you struck Dimitri the first time, I get the opening was tempting but he clearly had no sign you were going to and in scrambling to keep up immediately was put on the back foot by Ingrid and Sylvain. Then when you switched places, because he was already scrambling to keep up he hadn’t been paying attention to your side of the fight and by surprising him so, you left him no chance to even meaningfully delay Dimitri and Felix for a second there. Just because you are calling the shots in battle does not mean that you should expect others to blindly follow you if you’ve not already earned their trust.”

While she understood his point, in the sanctity of her mind she felt compelled to point out that this was _Ferdinand_ she was partnered with. It’s not as though she had not shown more goodwill than he had proven worthy of already !

“I hope you will forgive Robin,” Lucina smoothly interjected, “but fighting in pairs is something of a preferred subject of his — much of the Shepherd’s success as the Ylissean army’s vanguard is often attributed to his implementation of the Pair-Up system. On a more positive note, however, I believe that despite the sloppy teamwork, you made the right call in striking Dimitrifirst and in switching opponents. Good work on delaying them long enough, too. Which leads me to the foremost point of note in your performance. Claude, Dimitri, remember what we have told you about committing to a course of action. In the end, the decisive factor in the Eagles’ win is that where you wavered, they stuck to their course. They had a clear course of action : bait you into attacking them so they could whittle away at your numbers, retreat to lock the bulk of both your forces into fighting each other, pick off the stragglers and then attack both your remaining soldiers when you were too busy with each other. They did not hesitate when they lost Petra and Linhardt unexpectedly, and simply put were not ever in any genuine danger, because they knew what they were doing and stuck to it.”

Edelgard felt her chest swell with pride as she accepted the praise with muted thanks — it may have been more thanks to Byleth’s leadership than hers, but the comments on her fighting were her own. She was also surprised to feel that, rather than the sense of self-assured satisfaction she’d normally associate to the situation, seeing her fellow House leaders’ troubled faces actually bothered her slightly. Oh, certainly not enough to disturb the heady feeling of success, but here and now, after having heard all their debriefs, after realising that neither of them had as reliable a professor as they did… Well, it felt a little unfair.

Of course, such was life — she knew better than most that not all hands are dealt equal. In the end, they had failed to make the most of what they were given.

But she could salute the effort, at least.

So as chatter slowly began to pick up around the table, she found herself rethinking her decision to leave immediately now that this was over.

Next to her, her teacher had turned to Robin and was now being… thoroughly lectured about the intricacies of fighting in pairs. Claude and Anna had begun what sounded like a conversation about her shipping rates for imports from beyond the Veil — which, while potentially a _very_ interesting subject, was filled with the kind of playful banter she would rather stay far away from. So she shifted her gaze to Jeralt, Lucina and Dimitri, the former two discussing in finer detail his performance in the day’s battle.

And instead of leaving, she joined the three of them.

The first cup of wine became a second and a third, and even though Jeralt had the audacity to dare ruffle her hair and call her kid, even though a clearly intoxicated Dimitri had the gall to call her ‘El’ with obnoxious familiarity, even though Claude at one point came over to prattle about something and threw his arm around her shoulders as though they were bosom friends…

She had a good time.

When the annoying shopkeeper started all but throwing herself at an uncomfortable Jeralt, she was still having a good time.

When Lucina started to relax enough to tell a few stories of her family’s antics, she had a good time.

When Robin and Claude had a stupid argument and broke out a game of shatranj in the middle of the tavern, she was still having a good time.

When she started obviously swaying in her seat, she was _still_ having a good time. She was also very clearly in dire need of going to bed, something her teacher thankfully picked up on.

When Byleth walked her back to the monastery (under Robin and Anna’s delighted hollers), even in the silence, she was surprisingly having a good time.

Even stewing in her mortification after Byleth had left, having all but tucked her into bed, she was still stuck on the fact that she had a good time.

As sleep finally caught up with her, the reason why she was fixating on this so finally came to her.

When was the last time she’d even had a genuine good time ?

She didn’t know, but Edelgard hoped the wait for the next one would not be as long. No matter how much the Empress chafed at the wasted time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, that fight turned out to be a bit of a mess to read, but it was a bit of a mess for all three Houses, so at least part of that is by design as opposed to me getting mixed up, but while I've set roughly where most of the characters are at for the beginning of the canon timeline, I felt like I hadn't really portrayed where they stand as houses, so I thought this battle would be the perfect occasion.
> 
> The Deer may have formed a solid Claude-Hilda-Lysithea core, but they've neglected the rest and it shows : they're actually the most disunited of the lot, despite the mostly genial atmosphere between them. Byleth is shaping up the Eagles nicely, and though they have a long way to go, they are beginning to resemble a functional group of human beings. The Lions are quite tightly-knit, but there's still a clear split between Dimitri's group and Royal Academy + Ashe, and more importantly they have a bit of a downward dynamic going on at the moment, which I feel illustrates quite well all the dysfunctional underlying relationships of the core Dimitri group : this lot really doesn't have any proper direction.
> 
> Also, just to make it clear, Felix is a better swordsman than Petra and her winning here is not proof otherwise : she ambushed him, failed to finish him, got overwhelmed and in the end only won because his own hangups prevented him from making the move he recognised as his best way out. She just played to her advantages better and also is not a mess of a person.
> 
> The bar scene at the end was Robin's idea - he wanted the three leaders to get used to working together, bounce ideas off each other and all-around just be more at ease around the others because it'll make his life easier once his seminars on rulership finally happen. Also, if it gets Edelgard to let her guard down a little around them, well... Bonuses !
> 
> Anything else ? Well, I always found it odd that Byeth only had fire spells aside from that one Thunder, so have an explanation ; Lysithea panicked and went for the biggest gun she had in her arsenal, which was her unfinished attempt at Micaiah's Pyre, not a particularly good one but still more powerful than she had before, but she had nowhere near good enough a handle on it to do it fast and in distracting conditions. Edelgard got reports on Anna because Hubert is actually even more wary of her than he is of Robin and Lucina, after hearing of her smuggling prowess and learning how long she's been around for.
> 
> There's probably other things I should mention, but I'm a little tired right now, so if you have questions don't hesitate to leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer in a timely manner !


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey ! Remember this fic ? I sure didn't for a while !
> 
> No but seriously, times being what they are, I've been doing a lot of freelance work to keep the money coming in, and seeing as I never know when that's going to dry up, I've been doing as much of it as I could get my hands on so I really didn't have much of a mind for or the time to be writing this.
> 
> Not to mention that when I did, I ended up realising I wrote myself into a massive dead-end plot-wise and have to straight up delete a 4k words scene, which did wonders for my motivation, let me tell you.
> 
> Anyway, it's here ! Transition chapter, as we get to see some of the aftermaths of the mock battle, and life slowly settle down at the monastery. As always, rereads have been minimal because I am sick of looking at this and I have no beta, so viewer discretion is advised. Hope you enjoy !

Lorenz’s month had started rather inauspiciously, on account of how his previous one had ended — in fact, should he have to choose one word to describe the beginning of his year at the Monastery, ‘inauspicious’ might well be the best fit.

The series of unfortunate events which had led him to his current predicament had begun prior even to his arrival here. It had long been decided that he would attend this year, and everything had indicated that with the only true competition for the position being the Goneril daughter, he would be House leader.

Until, of course, Archduke Riegan had pulled out an heir from Goddess-knew-where, and of course had decided to have them attend the Academy the same year that he would. Just as a small reminder that he could, to spite his father.

Then once arrived, he’d discovered that said heir was an ill-mannered, uncouth lax ruffian of a layabout who, despite his hopes, had failed to showcase a single shred of nobility over the entire course of their short acquaintance.

He had hoped, then, to lead at least by example, as first amongst his peers in academics and combat prowess alike. Instead, their first set of grades had let him discover that despite his continued excellence he was trailing behind Lysithea, Claude and even Ignatz (a commoner !) in their theory classes. He was a graduate of the Royal Academy of Fhirdiad (or would have been, had circumstances not forced him to leave early), and the youngest student in their entire _year_ was getting better grades in Reason than he was !

And practicals… He had acquitted himself well enough, but the only distinction he could dubiously claim was that of the best spear user in the Deer, and only because the best in their year were in the other houses. From what he had seen, he was at best the von Aegir scion’s equal, but prince Dimitri’s two spear-using vassals looked to be cut from the same cloth and the prince himself was the uncontested best of them all. As a knight, what else could he fall back on ? Riding ? Leonie had him beat in the Deers alone, Marianne was capable of soothing the rowdiest stallion, and he’d _seen_ the way the von Galatea girl might as well have been born in stirrups (which, given her family’s current financial woes, might well have been the case).

His class has bonded together somewhat quickly, but it was at his expense, because he refused to condone their slovenly ways and silly antics and attempted to conduct himself in a manner befitting of his station, unlike their leader.

Speaking of nobility, his status should at least have earned him the right to be taken seriously, and yet even there he came short of those who surrounded him : not only were the three heirs to Fódlan’s rulers all attending, but Ferdinand was his equal in status (and not, as the little voice in his head nagged, his possible superior in light of the Empire’s raw power), as were Felix and Sylvain, and the only reason the Goneril were not more influential was because they were a bunch of fight-happy boors content to stay in the Locket and wait on the Almyrans. Caspar may have been a second son, but House Bergliez was one of the mightiest in the entire continent. Petra was the heir to Brigid, which while a vassal state to the Empire still made her his better in rank (in theory at least — the Goddess knew his father wielded more power than the king of _that_ particular backwater). Speaking of foreign princesses, one was even apparently teaching them now ! Not that he was willing to entertain such unfounded claims. Oh, the woman was nobility, of that there was no doubt — it was too obvious from her manners, her dining room etiquette, down to that peculiar firm yet calm tone that all those who’d undergone diplomacy training eventually picked up. But he too could claim to be prince of a faraway kingdom when lost on unknown shores with none the wiser.

All this, then, had plagued his first month at the Monastery, which he’d planned to at least salvage through a good showing at the mock battle, hunting down the other House leaders and showcasing his talents. They might beat him in a straight fight, but in the heat of battle he should have been able to make a good showing of himself, and finally let the others acknowledge his abilities. Instead, Claude had asked them to cower like the rat he was, ruining his chances, and when finally he had the opportunity to pursue a worthy duel, he’d instead found a scrappy Bergliez in his way, whose idiotic brand of mediocrity had only so far been outshined by his insufferable enthusiasm, and humiliatingly enough he’d lost to _that._

And so ended his first month. Truly, they were days to forget.

But for all his accumulated bitterness, for all the previous days had been trying, nothing had come as close to undoing him as this.

“I’m sorry, lord Gloucester but I have prior engagements with lord Gautier, please forgive me,” the pretty-enough girl from the standard-track demurred (a von Zollern, he recalled, a minor branch of the Hevring. Hardly the most noble of stocks, but suitable company for an afternoon’s entertainment), before hurriedly taking her leave towards the Cathedral.

The one place where _no one_ would ever go looking for Sylvain.

Not to mention she was the third to use the exact same excuse in the space of two days. The Gautier heir might carry a well-deserved reputation as a flirtatious rake, but he was certainly _not_ that successful of one.

He was of a mind to investigate the matter, but just as he was considering setting off an arm suddenly slung itself around his shoulders and held him back, catching him off-guard.

“Lorenz, old buddy, here you are !” exclaimed a voice he most definitely did not feel like hearing today.

Annoyed he’d let the Riegan heir sneak up on him, he made to throw him off his shoulders.

“I do apologise, von Riegan, but I have no time for tomfoolery today. I have important matters to attend to,” he declared, intent on getting as far away from the nuisance as possible. Even if he had to lie about his schedule.

To his surprise, however, as he attempted to shrug off Claude’s arm, the irritant didn’t budge.

Instead he tightened his grip.

“Now, Lorenz, you’ll have plenty of time to go skirt-chasing later… Well, no, actually, we need to talk about that too, but my point is, you’re clearing your schedule right now, because you and I need to have a little chat,” he said, his voice keeping that cheerful tone so evenly that it felt downright unnerving.

Claude was a layabout and a boor, but for all his more shifty tendencies never attempted to project strength or menace, even while fighting.

This Claude, however, had something scary about him.

Was he going to threaten him ? How quaint. Nonetheless, it appeared he was at last showing some spine, so perhaps it was worth indulging him this once.

“… Very well, lead the way then.”

He supposed the mystery of Sylvain’s sudden success with every woman he attempted to invite for tea would have to wait.

* * *

“Well, if he bothers you or any of your friends again, feel free to tell him you made arrangements with me, I’ll back you up if asked.”

“Thank you lord Gautier ! We really don’t want to cause you any trouble, but…”

The girl blushed, looking away embarrassedly towards her equally awkward friends. If he was reading them well (and he dared think he’d gotten fairly good at that), it was less blushing maidens amazed by his nobility and generous spirit and more embarrassed noble aware they asked a social superior with no relation to them for a free favour, but he didn’t overly mind it. They’d been fairly straightforward in asking, and hadn’t attempted to bat their eyelashes prettily (too much) while doing so, which was refreshing if nothing else. 

They were from Leicester, weren’t they ? He’d probably be at least more familiar with their faces if they’d been from the Kingdom, and they lacked the Empire’s harsher accents — either that or the Empire borders, then, but if they were from around Gloucester they’d have probably come up with a way to deal with Lorenz already.

“Nonsense. Your smiles are reward enough,” he laid on thickly, adding a roguish wink for good measure. He knew the role well, nowadays. “But I saw the Black Eagles girls heading towards the Dining Hall, so you and your friends should head off now, if you intend for there to be any remaining sweets for your teatime. And please, call me Sylvain, I beg you, lord Gautier is my father.”

“Then by your leave, lord Gautier,” the girl smiled impishly back, thankfully understanding his implicit dismissal. “I’ll be sure to mention what a charming teatime we had in your company, and how I’d be interested in a repeat.”

As she left with her friends, he allowed himself a more genuine smirk. Cute enough, cheeky _and_ she got what he was going for ? Maybe he’d actually take her up on her implied invitation next time.

“If the help you’ve been giving all these girls in avoiding Lorenz is just a ploy to get them in _your_ bed instead, I will be very cross with you, Sylvain.”

Ah. Ingrid had snuck up on him again.

“You know, Ingrid, I would never dare to suggest you are growing into anything other than the perfect knight, but do you ever think that you might have overly focused on the martial aspect of your education, over… other things ?”

“If you’re implying I should join you in your… carousing, then I can honestly say I have never considered it for an instant.”

“Harsh,” he laughed good-naturedly, enjoying the sliver of real irritation that pierced through her voice in their usual byplay. “But I was talking about all those little rules of society and tricks of language we’re all supposed to be using with each other as proper nobles.”

“… Did I miss something again ?”

She even sounded a little embarrassed. Good, she needed to unwind a little. Along the way to fulfilling her dream, she’d gotten so caught up in becoming the perfect knight that she was slowly turning into one of the Palace’s stone statues of one. Forcing her to show a little emotion now and then was good.

“The reason all these girls are bothered by Lorenz is because he doesn’t take polite refusals for an answer, yet they’re all of too low status to want to take the risk of outright shutting him down. Not only is Gloucester one of the biggest families on the entire continent when it comes to military and financial might, it’s also right up there in terms of prestige, and most importantly with Myrddin Bridge it controls the near totality of the easy land trade routes between the Empire and the Alliance, because no one bothers going through Hrym and Ordelia anymore. So all these Empire and Leicester girls in particular feel like they just can’t take the risk of upsetting Lorenz’s family, for fear of repercussions, and that means they can’t risk just outright telling him to screw off.”

“And they go to you because your father’s status can shield you, and therefore them, from any potential consequences, while you being an incorrigible flirt helps sell the story that you would be seeing so many girls at once,” she mused.

“I can’t help but notice you worded that last part a little harshly, no ?” he answered lightly to an unimpressed glare. “You’ve mostly got the right of it, though,” he admitted.

“I thought you hated their kind though ? The ones who constantly try to leverage your status for their own gain ?”

“I hate social climbers,” he shrugged off. “Considering all these girls are _that_ desperate to avoid arguably the biggest catch status-wise in this academy short of Dima and Claude, I can give them a pass on that one, especially considering they’re doing me a favour in return.”

“… What favour ?” she asked, narrowing her eyes and her voice gaining an edge to it which was… actually slightly hurtful. 

Was she really implying what he thought ?

“Wow, was your opinion of me that low, Ingrid ?” he joked more lightly than he felt.

When she said nothing, but her look didn’t abate, he felt himself grow more serious.

And a little colder.

“They help spread word that I‘m an ‘incorrigible flirt’, as you put it, and a fairly charming if obvious one at that. That means that the girls who are in it for a good time and enjoy playing the game for the sake of it know I’m fine with that, it makes the ones who’d try and seduce me for my status think I’m an easy mark and act way too obviously in consequence, and it makes those prim-and-proper, noble in all endeavours type stay away from me, which is mostly the way I like it,” he told her flatly.

There was an awkward silence.

“… I… didn’t hear anything like that in the conversation you just had.”

“Well, not all of them do it knowingly. In that girl’s case, however, you just didn’t realise it. Anything else ?”

There was another awkward silence, as Ingrid shuffled in place.

“… Dimitri wanted you and I to go through some teamwork drills with him in the Knight Hall, that’s why I was looking for you,” she eventually answered.

“Then let’s not keep him waiting,” he cheerfully smiled back, entirely aware that she could tell it was completely faked.

“Wait Syl—” she began, but he was already gone, unwilling to talk now that his previous good cheer had vanished.

Instead, he took ahold of the grudge he could tell was forming, and buried it deeply in the pit of his stomach, where it could stew with all the other ones until he processed it, digested it, and learned to live with it, as he had with all the others.

Dimitri didn’t notice a thing.

* * *

Lorenz was a bit surprised Claude had taken him to his room — he was ordinarily _very_ defensive of it, and the only person whom he knew had set foot in it was Hilda. Judging from their closeness, it was possible Lysithea had been allowed inside as well, but if that was the case, he did not know.

What he _did_ know, however, was that he was most likely not being allowed in there as a mark of trust.

And it would have had to be as a mark of trust, because the room very much belied Claude’s lackadaisical act — open books and hastily scribbled notes were littered all over his desk (and part of the floor), the shelves were stocked with a heteroclitic mix of literature ranging from the trite to the academically charged, a rough hand-drawn map of Fódlan littered with annotations covered one wall and, most imposingly, a chemist’s set took the place of honour on the desk, while various vials and reagents were scattered all over the room, most labeled with some sort of filing system he couldn’t make heads nor tail of. This was the room of the snake he’d always figured Claude had to be — complete with poor housekeeping. There was dust all over the floor, a vase was full of half-withered flowers and the covers were heaped in a short stack on top of the unmade bed.

And yet, playing the part of a gracious host, Claude sat him down on a chair he was fairly sure had originally come from the library, and got some tea ready, though he stopped short of adding milk and sugar. A quick sniff told him why.

“Pine needles ?”

“What can I say, I’ve always had a soft spot for the exotic,” he answered back, tone still carefree, far from the undercurrent of menace he’d felt earlier.

“Well, I suppose you had to show a hint of culture at _some_ point,” Lorenz conceded instead, curious to see where the von Riegan would take this.

He wasn’t expecting the tired sigh that came in answer.

“Yeah, this. This is why you’re here. Look, Lorenz, you don’t like me, and honestly that’s entirely mutual. But this whole… thing you have with constantly going on about your superiority needs to stop.”

“Excuse me— !” he began, but to his surprise Claude threw him the darkest glare he’d ever seen on the man, and he felt himself almost forced to shut up. Much like earlier, it was like Claude was suddenly channeling someone else entirely.

“No. For once, you are going to shut up, and listen. Your status, your bloodline, they mean nothing here, in this room, in this monastery. You don’t rule the Leicester Alliance. It’s a council. A council your father is not even head of, let alone you. Your status, you got it from buddying up to the Empire lords, keeping your hands well clean of the Rebellion and then taking advantage of your trade routes when the Empire came down on the Ordelia. The Ordelia that your father, might I add, actively persuaded the council to throw to the wolves and all but let the Empire annex, despite my grandfather’s warnings. So for once in your life, you are going to acknowledge that fact, and since you refuse to listen to Claude, then you are going to listen to the von Riegan, and believe me when I say I am pissed enough that you’ve forced me to do this.”

“… Are you accusing my father of—”

“I said _shut up_.”

Someone scraped their chair on the ground, as though prepared to run for it, and Lorenz belatedly realised it was him.

… He refused to let himself be intimidated by Claude von Riegan, of all people. He sat himself back down and had another sip of tea, acting nonchalant, but he knew it was too late. The damage was done, and he’d shown a hint of submissiveness where he should not have flinched.

“Good. Now, I was hoping you’d mature and grow a little and we wouldn’t have to do this, but after the mock battle, you haven’t really left me with that much choice. You can chafe all you want, you can complain, you can contest my decisions, and that is your prerogative, but I _am_ your house leader and when we’re out in the field on missions, you _listen to me_. In the debrief after the battle, the teachers were clear with me : if I didn’t get you to fall in line at least on assignments, you were going to get yourself killed, and some of us with you. And I’d like to think you wouldn’t do something that stupid again, but it’s been three days since then and you’ve not even apologised once, to anyone, for this. So we’re doing this the hard way.”

From a shelf next to him, he produced a small vial which he wiggled theatrically in front of his eyes, as a little of his more playful nature bled through.

“In Dagda, this is known is miracle dew. It’s commonly said that a drop a day will help the most barren branch blossom anew.”

“… I fail to see how fanciful wife’s tales are relevant to the current situation.”

“Because you’re being too strait-laced, as always. It’s a pun,” he laughed away. “You see, a couple of drops taken regularly are enough to keep a man… embarrassingly impotent. The reason they say that is because this particular poison is most famous for being used by branch families with shaky standing to prevent the main line from having heirs, thus allowing their own branches to flourish anew.”

There was a beat of silence, as Lorenz came to the horrifying implication of what he’d just been told. And looked at his teacup. Had pine needle infusion always been this colour ? The cup was dark porcelain, he’d thought it was just evidence of Claude’s poor taste in tableware, but was it to mask that it’d been tampered with ?

And Claude was just smirking at him, his sudden panic obviously a source of great entertainment to him.

“Now don’t worry, I’d never use such a thing on one of my Deers, but on an unrelated note please do remember that we take all our meals together, we have rotating cooking duties, and the kitchen staff like me far more than they do you. Something to meditate on, maybe ?”

“You…” he began, apoplectic and ready to let Claude have it, but sudden awareness of a growing stomachache stopped him in his tracks.

“And now that I’ve stalled for long enough, while I’d never make you drink something quite as heinous as that, I did slip a fast-acting laxative in your tea. If you leave right now, you should be able to make it with time to spare, but better not take any risks, yeah ?”

“Claude von Riegan…”

His building tirade, however, was interrupted by another stomach cramp, more painful than the previous one. In this, clearly, he hadn’t been bluffing. So he swallowed his pride and his rage, and headed for the door without another word.

“Oh and the staff and I have received plenty of complaints about you harassing the female students, so this is also an official reminder to keep your skirt-chasing to a minimum, or else you might find yourself a little _short-staffed_ for a fair amount of time !” he heard behind him.

And while he was sure that part must be a misunderstanding, rumours that were disseminated by others jealous of his success with the fairer sex, there was no time to answer. Which Claude knew, and he’d timed it perfectly so that he wouldn’t have to handle a _civilised_ discussion.

Later on, when he’d calm down, he’d probably acknowledged that for all his uncouth barbarity, Claude had finally acted with the decisiveness demanded by his position, if not the decorum.

But right now, he had rage to seethe on and a privy to find.

* * *

Throwing aside the covers as she heard the door close, Hilda allowed herself a little cat stretch after having maintained her cramped position for entirely too long.

Urgh, if Claude’s room had been on the first floor, she could have just listened at the window !

“You were right,” Claude admitted. “He didn’t even glance twice at the covers.”

“Told you he’d just assume you were a mess and go with it — not that you aren’t. Would it kill you to dust the place a little ? I think I got some in my eye. There’s housekeeping here, you know ?”

“Don’t want to let them in my room,” was the embarrassed mumble she received in reply.

Hmm. That lacked some fire. Glancing at him, he did look troubled. Goddess knew why, putting Lorenz down like that was possibly the most entertaining thing she’d seen all week ! And she would absolutely call him out as a horrid liar should he try to pretend he did not enjoy doing it.

“So, you’re going to tell me why the long face, or are you just going to brood in a corner to cultivate your air of mystery ?”

He jumped a little at that, as though shaken out of his thoughts, before snorting a little. Good, she still had it.

“It’s not much,” he demurred. “Just wasn’t too sure on how to work the whole authority thing, so I tried to channel my father there for the beginning. It’s… not a good feeling. I don’t really like the way he does things,” he confessed.

She was very careful not to let her interest show. This was prime gossiping material ! Not to mention perhaps an insight into why Claude was this giant ball of shadowy nerves !

“Some father you have there, then,” she replied instead, raising an eyebrow. “You sure he’s not a bandit ?”

She could have pushed for more, but he’d clam up instantly. Better to let him think she wouldn’t make a fuss, because then he’d tell her without her having to make any active effort !

To her surprise, however, her crappy quip made him erupt into a true proper belly laugh.

“Figures you of all people would say that,” was all the explanation he gave for it, much to her frustration.

Now she wanted to know even more ! But he wouldn’t cede, so after a little pestering she moved on.

“What’s in that bottle anyway ?” she asked, pointing at the vial he’d waved threateningly at Lorenz earlier.

“Why, didn’t you hear what I told our dear lord Gloucester ? Why don’t you tell me then ?” he answered with a beaming smile.

“Claude von Riegan !” she mock-gasped. “Are you trying to get a delicate, impressionable maiden such as myself to stoop to your level of crass ribaldry ?”

“And what if I were ?” he happily gleamed back.

See, this is why she was glad Claude was around. No one else played along like this. Lysithea had some nice straight-woman wit to her, but sometimes a girl just wanted to be silly.

Also, sometimes she wanted to satisfy her curiosity.

“Then I’d have to tell you to spit it out already. I want to know what’s in there !”

“Alas, the lady rejects my advances ! But fair point,” he conceded with a laugh, before throwing the little vial at her. “How about you tell me ? I know most of my collection is probably alien to you, but I can guarantee you that you can figure this one out.”

With a small snort, she decided to indulge him. Unlike some of the more pliable men out there, Claude never tried to flex his intellect on her, so this wasn’t a trap. Which meant it was probably the setup for a for joke, and she was happy to play along with that.

“Where’d the whole miracle dew thing even come from then ?”

He snorted.

“Not real, as far as I can tell. It’s from an old sailor’s tale, about a Dagdan pirate captain who was jealously possessive of his crew, to the point that eventually he poisons their food so that they can’t visit any brothels and risk getting attached to the women — or any bastards.”

“Weird story,” she commented, feeling her eyebrows raise slightly at that summary.

“Crew come and go from one ship to the next,” he shrugged off. “Any captain that can’t accept most of his crewmates will probably one day sail for a direct competitor at some point has no business running a ship, because he can’t be trusted to do business in good faith if he’s a merchant, and is just another prison to a pirate.”

An interested hum was all she contributed in answer, filing away a possible explanation as to why he was _very_ careful not to get too close to other people. Expecting them to jump ship eventually then ?

Sloshing the vial a little bit, she noticed it was heavier and a little thicker than water, and it left a small film on the clear glass (how did he even get so many glass vials ? Those things were _expensive_ — and she should know, considering the amount of perfumes she owned) so it was probably some kind of oil ?

She pulled out the cork and gave the contents a small sniff. To her surprise, a strong floral fragrance immediately assaulted her nostrils.

“That’s orange blossom and… jasmine extract ? There’s myrtle and melissa in there too, I think ? There’s a couple of smells I can barely catch hidden under them… Is that the real product, and the flower scents are just there to hide it ?”

For once, Claude actually looked a little gobsmacked.

“… I was expecting you to notice the second layer, but you actually nailed all four of the flowers straight away. Colour me impressed.”

“Claude, you have such little faith in me ? How will I ever recover from the mental anguish of finding out my best friend has such little faith in my abilities ?”

She _loved_ that little wild-eyed look which passed through his face whenever she mentioned the f-word in his presence. It never got old. Claude was always so in control, until you forced him to acknowledge he actually had feelings, it was incredibly entertaining. Even Lysithea could tease him when she played her cards right. Lysithea !

“Forgive me, Hilda dearest, for I have shamed myself in your eyes. How can I ever repay you ?” he hammed it up, playing straight into her hand, though knowingly so. 

This whole thing where the person she manipulated into doing stuff for her was both aware she was doing so and completely fine with it so long as she went along with their whims was pretty new, but proving delightfully entertaining so far.

“Well, as a pious and forgiving lady, I suppose that I could find it in my heart to forgive you, now that you’ve reminded me of something very important…”

:Oh ? And what could that be ?”

“Why, that you can make some manner of perfumes in that fancy little kit of yours of course !” she exclaimed, favouring him with a broad smile. “I hope you realise that I now expect to be showered with cosmetics throughout the year !”

“Careful, I might decide to take you up on that more literally than you intend,” he laughed. “You’re not getting anything if you can’t tell me what’s in that bottle though, don’t think I’m letting you off the hook.”

“Well, if it’s for free products, I suppose I can make an effort !”

With that, she got back to the bottle, inhaling a deeper breath in, letting the smell settle in her nostrils for a moment.

“Is that geranium ? But it’s too cloying, it’s not an extract, isn’t it ? It’s essential oil… And the other two smells have the same kind of consistency to them, so they’re probably also essential oils. Is that… rosemary oil I think ? And there’s one last one… some kind of wood ? I don’t think I can single it out… Wait, no, it’s cedar isn’t it ? Am I right ?”

“Completely correct, I’m… actually amazed. Are you sure you don’t want to be my assistant ?” he offered, and for all the joking she was surprised to hear a note of genuine interest and earnestness there.

Though she’d still have to refuse. He sounded like he expected her to do well, and that…

“Sounds like work. I’ll pass ! But I do have a good memory for smells, you know. It comes with being an airhead, plenty of space to breathe in there,” she smirked, giving her head a little bonk as Claude snorted. Yeah, that ship had sailed. “Does this mean I get free perfume then ?”

“Nope ! You’ve… _somehow_ told me all the components, but you haven’t actually told me what it is.”

Oh. Right, that.

She tried to wrack her brains fast concerning what any of these three could do. Sure, drinking that would give anyone a stomachache, but that didn’t seem very efficient. Instead, it seemed much more like some kind of skin… care…

She gave the bottle another quick sniff, and quickly focused on the geranium smell.

Then she grabbed Claude by the collar, pulled him to her and buried her face in his hair.

Pulling away a little, she gave Claude an incredulous stare (wait, did he look a little flustered ? Ooh, _she could work with this_ ).

“Did you threaten Lorenz with your _shampoo_ ?”

“Technically ex-shampoo. These luscious locks don’t care for themselves, you know ? I used to pick up tips from the sailors at the docks about what they used in other countries until I found the mix I felt worked best, but I had to stop after my grandfather named me his heir. Apparently, perfuming one’s hair that extensively looks too foreign and decadent, so now I alternate between single oils for my hair care and don’t smell half as good as I used to.”

He’d sneaked another little, well-diluted tidbit about his oh-so-mysterious past in there (time spent on docks, access to luxury goods, nautical references, that bandit joke from earlier… Was Claude’s dad _actually_ a Dagdan pirate or something ?), but that would be for future Hilda to ponder. Because right now…

Her eyes caught Claude’s supremely amused look, and they both instantly broke down laughing.

“ _Lorenz ran away from your shampoo !_ ”

It was a couple of minutes before they slowly began to regain their breath, which was in her eyes entirely justified. The image of a panicked, indignant Lorenz fleeing for fear of being emasculated by Claude’s surprisingly excellent hair care regime (though now that she thought of it, he did have ridiculously perfect ‘luscious locks’, as he put it) would be burned into her mind for a long while.

It was at that moment that Claude’s door burst open, courtesy of a confident, dynamic Lysithea.

“Claude, Hilda, I heard Lorenz was seen running away from the dorms looking panicked, so if you’re _finally_ done with him there’s a… few… things…” she trailed off upon entering, and it took Hilda a moment to consider why.

She was still holding on to Claude’s collar, check. They were both looking flushed and out of breath, check. Claude’s normally artfully tousled hair was a complete mess, check. They’d fallen over from their chairs and were lying on the floor, check.

She caught Claude’s eyes, and thanked the Goddess she’d run into someone like him at the Academy.

Where just about every man she knew would have been all embarrassed at the situation, one shared look at the absurdity of the situation and Lysithea’s horrified face was enough to send the two of them straight back into another laughing fit.

* * *

“Enough. I think a short break is in order.”

At her words, Dimitri let his spear fall and leaned forwards, his hands on his knees, heaving sharp, rapid breaths. A twinge of self-doubt led her to wonder if she was perhaps pushing him too much for these simple drills (she’d taken a book out of Uncle Fredrick’s page for this one), but she eventually shook it off. She knew what she was on about, and if you could be precise when out of breath and sore everywhere, you could be precise at any point.

Nonetheless, while Dimitri’s progress had been encouraging enough, if perhaps not as fast as she’d hoped — there was clearly something more deep-rooted to his fear of his own strength than caution alone —, lately, he’d been a little unfocused She’d been waiting to see if it the matter would resolve itself, but….

She gave him an instant to catch his breath before deciding to push.

“Dimitri ?”

“Yes, professor ?” he replied, still looking slightly dazed (and refusing to drop the title and just call her Lucina already — at least he’d given up on ‘lady Lowell’ after the first week or so, but she’d really not taken to the title as Byleth had).

“Your mind is elsewhere. I was happy enough let you sort whatever troubles you on your own, but it has been impacting your training.”

“Oh— I’m terribly sorry, professor, I swear that… I apologise for troubling you—”

Ah, she was too harsh again. With a sigh, she consciously slipped out of her teacher role, as the prince continued to trip over his own words, desperate to apologise for absolutely nothing.

“That is not what I meant, Dimitri. It may not be in my power to help you, but it is clear that you have not confided in anyone about what is ailing you. I would be happy to listen, if you wished me to,” she told him, sending him a soft smile to calm him down.

In many ways, dealing with the heir to the throne of Faerghus was a lot like dealing the pegasi foals back at the castle stables.

“Oh… I… am sorry for getting carried away, professor. And it’s simply that, well…”

She waited patiently for him to continue, happy to let him talk on his own. Dimitri, among other things, was better off never being rushed, especially when it came to his feelings.

“I fear that is only a trivial matter… I would not wish to trouble you…”

She immediately quelled him with a look she’d learned from lady Maribelle. While a strict disciplinarian, she _had_ been an excellent teacher, in many regards.

“A trivial matter which has been plaguing you for days now ?”

There was another embarrassed silence, and the redness to Dimitri’s cheeks at that moment made him look distinctly boyish as he refused to meet her gaze.

“Ingrid and Sylvain are fighting, and neither of them will tell me why !” he eventually burst out, his petulant tone very much reinforcing her previous opinion. 

Heavens, but sometimes she forgot that most of them were not even of an age with Ricken or Donnel.

“Given that I understand that this is a regular occurrence, I suppose there is a difference this time ?”

“It’s not uncommon for them to be at odds, but, well… Normally Ingrid is the one angry at him, but this time, it’s clearly the other way around. She has been treading on eggshells around him all week, and he has not given her a genuine smile in the same amount of time, and both of them try to pretend everything is fine as soon as I’m around, as though they can’t trust me with this, and every time I try to ask if something is the matter they both brush me off saying that they arefine !…”

It all tumbled out in a steadily accelerating rant, and she let it flow out, waiting until he was catching his breath again, looking slightly incredulous that he’d opened up that much, until she spoke again. This really must have been gnawing at him, she mused, because he seemed absolutely gobsmacked to realise how much he had needed to get this out of his system.

“Do you feel slightly better already ?”

“… Yes. Thank you, professor…”

“Do not thank me just yet,” she smiled at him. “Now, concerning your issue… Prior to jumping at conclusions regarding their lack of trust in you, care to hear the thoughts of someone not embroiled in this whole situation ?”

He nodded at her with almost desperate enthusiasm, which she could entirely relate to. She used to manage a group which included among others Kjelle, Inigo, Severa, Cynthia… She had eventually learned to navigate their wildly clashing personalities, but not without making her own set of mistakes on the way.

In fact, one could even say it wasn’t until they came back to the past, and she saw Robin at work with the Shepherds, that she truly learned to get a handle on their personal dynamics.

“Forgive me if it is a somewhat caricatural portrayal of their relationship, but could you say that Sylvain is a habitual skirt chaser, and Ingrid usually the one to clean up after him ?”

“Yes.”

“And this has been the case for a long time ?”

“I… remember an incident with Ingrid’s grandmother when Sylvain was eight, so yes,” he confessed somewhat shamefacedly (why ? It was… hopefully not his fault) and she was forced to rearrange the image of Sylvain she’d formed.

She’d thought he knew more moderation than Inigo, but this was…

She shook her surprise off. Stay on target.

“… Longer than I’d even thought, then. Then the most likely explanation is fairly simple : in her growing frustration at his antics, Ingrid said something genuinely hurtful beyond her usual reproach, and Sylvain has not forgiven her yet, most likely because he is waiting on her to apologise. Something she has probably not done because, while she regrets what she has said, she feels as though he is overreacting considering what he has put her through throughout the years. And so they are stuck in this deadlock, where the one who was in the wrong will not apologise because they most likely never have gotten any in years of picking up the other’s mess.”

“… Is it truly that simple ?”

She shrugged.

“I cannot say. It seems to me the most likely explanation, but I am sure you could conjure up a thousand others were you to give it proper thought. The… roles and situation involved are simply not unfamiliar to me, so I have allowed myself a guess.”

When Severa had gotten it in her head to learn the sword, she’d single-handedly declared herself Lon’qu’s student. Unfortunately for her, that position very soon ended up with her gaining an unofficial role as Inigo’s handler.

Severa was far less patient than Ingrid had ever been. And to worsen it all, Severa had a small crush on Inigo at the time, which Lucina had never noticed until Cynthia told her years later, unlike the near-totality of their friend group (minus the man himself). The whole situation had been a mess and her failure to correctly interpret and resolve it had led to months of tension and a gaping wedge between her and Severa. One that, to be frank, they had never totally recovered from.

Dimitri seemed far less likely to make her own mistake of trying to forcefully investigate the matter, and Ingrid seemed possessed of a better temper than Severa, so things would most likely not get quite that heated, but… why take the risk ?

“I suppose that makes sense, but then why will neither of them talk to me about it ?”

“Once again, there are a myriad possible reasons. If my previous scenario is correct, perhaps Ingrid is too ashamed of what she has said to tell you, and Sylvain scared that you too would hurt him in your evaluation of his character. Perhaps this has been the result of a long-time tension in their relationship, and as your friend group acted much like a buffer between them, they are scared that by involving you they will return to the previous status quo without solving anything. Can you not yourself think of a dozen reasons other than a wish to distance themselves from you, or a lack of faith in your friendship ?”

It was a little painful, to see him so utterly floored at the idea that self-flagellation did not have to be the first instinct to reach for at the slightest hint of things gone wrong. She’d pieced a little more of his story over their time at the monastery, but clearly whatever had taken place had left a much stronger mark on her student than she had thought.

“… When said like that, it all seems so obvious…”

“And yet, you did not see it. Why ?”

He flinched, and she was almost tempted to abandon this line of questioning. But in weeks of working with him, for all that she’d tried to get him to gain in confidence, she’d not so much as chipped at the shroud of misery and self-recrimination which hung around him like Henry’s murder of crows.

So instead she waited, praying she had not pushed too far, until he finally cracked.

“I have not been a good friend to them. I… have not been there when they needed me, and yet I rely on them at every turn. I could not blame them for thinking little of me.”

And there it was. She’d always thought that Severa, Gerome or Mother hadn’t appreciated the struggles she had faced whenever they told her she was fussing over pointless what-ifs, but now that she was hearing similar doubts echoed by someone else…

Dragons above, had she really once been that silly ?

(Deep down inside, she knew that the answer was yes.)

“That is a moot point. Whether you or they would be to blame matters not. You will have time enough to deliberate on that if it turns out that is indeed in the case. You have enough on your plate with what has been and what is alone, without adding what may yet be to the mix.”

“So you want me to simply… forget about it, and move on as though nothing were wrong ?”

“That is not what I said. Offer them your assistance. If they do not take it, then simply accept that this is a matter they wish to resolve on their own. If there turns out to be more to the situation, address it then.”

She shot him a sorry smile.

“To try and shape our friends’ lives for the better is a noble wish, but we must be conscious of our limits. There is already enough help you can give in other matters, where it will likely be more needed and welcomed both. Trust in them to sort out their own matters, as I am sure they have in the past trusted you to sort yours.”

Dimitri seemed to mull over this for a little while, pacing on the spot, until she noticed the shadows on the floor had slightly elongated and they’d bitten a sizeable chunk out of their allotted time.

“How are your back muscles ?”

“I’m sorry ?” he perked up, startled out of his reverie.

“I believe that’s enough rest. How are your back muscles ?”

“Very sore, but still operational, by my reckoning,”he admitted.

Hmm.

“Take a ready stance,” she told him while rising from her seat, which he did without questions.

Whatever faults he may have had as a student, he was nothing if not diligent.

Circling around him, she gave a rough shove to the side of his back, nearly sending him tumbling over, though he caught himself in time.

Definitely more sore than he’d said, then.

Good. Between that tiredness and having cooled down a little, his body should be fighting him back enough for her to get started on the _real_ precision drills.

“It will do. Now go back to those training posts… No, not the circle, the group of three in a line. I will continuously call out left, centre or right without slowing down, and you will hit the relevant post with a basic thrust, no flourishes, and I want to see you maintain that posture,” she instructed. “No, take another step forward… There. Now your task will be to stab into the post, but never _through_ it. We will start with three sets of fifty. Questions ?”

Dimitri gulped as he looked back at her, but simply shook his head and grit his teeth.

Diligent, and he certainly complained a lot less than she did to uncle Fredrick when he first made her do this, scared that she might have inherited _all_ of her father’s ridiculous physical might.

Granted, she had been nine at the time.

And anyway, he could have far more gruelling a teacher than she. Right now, poor Felix was stuck with Robin, after all.

* * *

Felix threw himself to the ground and started rolling around, desperately trying to stop the fire from catching further than his trousers.

“If you’d paid attention to your footwork, this wouldn’t have happened, you know.”

“Shut up and help me !”

“Sure, wait, let me try this trick I picked up from one of the Royal Academy textbooks I nabbed, I think I’ve got the theory down… Blizzard !”

Felix bit back another set of what would have probably been highly creative swears (by his standards) as he felt his legs get suddenly encased in a block of ice.

He’d developed a new, special kind of hatred for his teacher that he honestly hadn’t thought he would for anyone short of the boar and his father, though this was a different brand of resentment altogether. It had been over a week now since he’d manned up and approached Robin for further tutoring in the aftermath of his poor showing at the mock battle, and he should have probably thought through a bit more carefully the foreign savant’s warnings about simulated battle conditions.

He’d since realised that when he’d had his first bout with him, he’d gotten to experience ‘duel mode’ Robin, who fought with the brutal efficiency of a soldier but still dedicated his entire focus to him. But now… it started with team drills, borrowing a few on-duty knights to work with the both of them.

At first, the teams were evenly split, Robin and Felix each leading one, and all of them joined the melee. Felix had stupidly anticipated it’d be a set of one-on-ones, until Robin had just Winded him away, caught one of his teammates in a pincer, struck him down, same with the other one, and then the three of them had casually handed Felix’s ass over to him.

Then, after a few of these where Felix and his new teammates kept stepping on each other’s toes, he’d not even stepped forward, happy to direct the other two from behind and offer them the occasional support spell. It had looked as though it should have been easier, being a three-on-two-and-a-half by all measures, but the fact that taking your eyes off Robin meant eating a Thunder spell instantly somehow made it even harder.

Then they’d all teamed up against Robin, and _that_ had been the eye opener. They were five-on-one, and they could not even beat him, let alone manage to actually outnumber him : Fire spells closed off flanking angles, Wind spells pushed back anyone running straight at him, yet at the same time not rushing him meant asking to be picked off by Thunder spells, and whenever one of them _did_ manage to reach him, well, they still needed to actually beat him weapon in hand.

Which none of them managed, even though he held his sword one-handed _all the time_ so he could have a hand free for casting.

That first session had been the only one with extra partners, but Robin had used it to impart a very simple lesson to him, which he hadn’t fully grasped during the mock battle : his swordsmanship was cluttered. His fighting style, honed as it had been mostly through sparring duels and solo practice, had led him to learn some bad habits which he now had to completely excise. Extraneous movements which served no real purpose, footwork which relied on flat, even terrain and made him prance around straight into his teammates, and the worst of them, a target-focused mentality which made him lose track of the battlefield and other’s positioning within it.

He’d stopped using his newly-trained Thunder after the first three times Robin had simply seen him charge it, placed himself between Felix and one of the knights, dodged at the last instant and let nature do the rest.

So when they met up again, Robin focused on teaching him two things : how to scour anything unnecessary from his fighting style, and how to constantly stay aware of his body and its surroundings.

Unfortunately, he did this mostly by constant sparring, and ruthlessly punishing any examples of the former or the latter.

Case in point, he’d stopped paying attention to his footing, focused as he was on Robin’s sword, and failed to notice he was being made to look up, meaning Robin’s free hand was free to set his legs on fire. Again.

The ice was brand new, but considering how annoying it was, it was probably here to stay.

“Why did you do that,” he groaned. “My legs are freezing.”

“You did ask for help !” was the cheerful answer he’d half-expected. “Besides, I thought I’d get you used to it !”

Aaaand there it was.

“What do you mean ?”

“Your friend Ingrid was asking me about ranged options for aerial knights, and seeing as she wasn’t too keen on the bow, we tried out some basic magic and it turns out she’s a surprisingly decent hand with it. Seems to have an affinity for Ice too, so I thought I’d give you a little taster session. She’s not anywhere near having mastered it yet, but it’s showing promise.”

So now an angry Ingrid could throw ice magic at them. The same Ingrid who had once threatened to freeze Sylvain’s balls off if he did not behave.

Instinctively, he tried to cross his legs protectively, though stuck as they were, he just wiggled his hips a little pathetically.

“… If Sylvain dies of hypothermia, I’m throwing you to the wolves,” he promised darkly.

“I mean you can take it that way,but it _will_ be very entertaining ! Besides,” he added, gaining a slightly machiavellian cast to his face, “let’s see if he tries to hit on Luci ever again with _that_ hanging over his head.”

There was silence as Felix digested the full extent of his childhood friend’s stupidity.

“Did he really try ?”

“Once, three weeks ago.”

“You have issues.”

“I simply want to teach him early on not to harbour any false hopes,” was the angelic reply, belied by the fact there was now another Fire spell ready in his hands. 

“Now, let’s melt you out of there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, I promised myself I'd keep this one short because I always ramble on for far too long.
> 
> Lorenz gets a POV ! I don't like Lorenz. I'm sure he has redeeming qualities, but I grew up surrounded by people with his class superiority complex and it makes me want to set him on fire every time he speaks. I've tried not to let that influence the way I write his thoughts too much, but there is no way I am objective enough to have managed that flawlessly, so I at least hope it's not too bad.
> 
> Claude and Hilda continue to be bros, because eventual drama is more fun if you establish an emotional bond first ! This scene would be shortly before their C-support, which will probably happen offscreen in the very near future.
> 
> Sylvain doesn't like Lorenz either and enjoys screwing him over, and his purely good-hearted intentions get horribly misread by Ingrid. I hope it doesn't feel as though I'm too harsh on her - do remember that the scene is from Sylvain's POV - because considering his track record, his repeated failures to improve his behaviour and years of accumulated frustration at being the one to deal with this shit, maybe she was out of line, but he sure as hell owes her at least the benefit of the doubt.
> 
> Dimitri adds being a friend to the list of things he considers himself to be failing at, not considering that maybe not absolutely everything has to be his fault, and Lucina is stuck playing therapist, belatedly realising by the same occasion that she absolutely was a teenage angst drama queen once upon a time, as were pretty much most of her friends.
> 
> Felix gets set on fire, because I didn't get to immolate Lorenz so someone had to take one for the team.
> 
> That about right ? There's probably more to say, but I can't think of anything and I just want to go to bed, so just hit me up in the comments if you have questions and I'll eventually get to answering them so long as they don't arrive while I'm in the middle of writing the next chapter !


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heya ! Wasn't anticipating dropping a chapter this soon, but a project I was working for got cancelled, so with the unexpected free time and a fairly straightforward chapter, turned out I managed to crank it out easily enough despite it being about 11k. Now is mostly going to be holiday time though, so I expect I won't be working much or particularly fast on the next chap for a little while - expect the next chapter around mid-January at the earliest.
> 
> Reason why this was so long yet straightforward ? It's another loredump chapter. It's not only that, but it's still the biggest part, as we witness the first rulership seminar. These won't get covered in such details again, this was more to introduce the setting these would take place in and the mood among the participants. I expect the only ones I won't gloss over will be the Emmeryn and Walhart ones.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy the chap, as always no beta but I did actually bother re-reading a couple of times this time so there might be less typos left !

“Ladies, lords, welcome to this first rulership seminar !” he announced to his audience, who looked a little too lacking in motivation to his taste.

Claude was the only one who looked genuinely curious and — dare he hope — even a little excited. Dimitri looked mostly confused as to why he was there, considering he’d mostly accepted because Lucina told him to. Petra had put on her best diligent face, but seemed a little intimidated at having been singled out along with the three leaders.

Edelgard, meanwhile, looked as though she wanted to be anywhere else, yet still wanted to keep an eye on what he was doing, so instead she was stuck in this class, eyeing the whole place as though expecting a trap to be sprung on her at any moment.

Not the best of beginnings, but it could have been worse. He’d coached Chrom on diplomacy — he could get through this.

“Now, you’re all busy people, so this won’t be a weekly thing — expect it roughly twice a month, depending on what time allows. But I’m sure you’re wondering what, precisely, we’ll be doing here, that you wouldn’t have done already in your prior studies.”

There was a firm nod on Edelgard’s part, arguably the most insolent thing he’d ever seen her do — girl needed to speak her mind more openly, honestly. Though at least Byleth was working on that, in her own special way, which mostly seemed to involve constant innuendos and alcohol (he’d noticed she’d started to sneak the Adrestian heir some wine whenever the Eagles had dinner, to get her to loosen up a little).

“While neither of us doubt that you have been taught extensively on the matter, and that some of you might even have had the opportunity to put this into practice already,” Lucina picked up next to him, “you are all young enough that you at the very least lack experience, if nothing else. We cannot offer you a country to run, but between the both of us, we do not lack for it, and by sharing it with you, we hope to both shore up any doubts you may have, and temper any recklessness you might carry within you.”

“Our own experiences aside,” he picked back up, “we’ve made throughout our lives the acquaintance of quite a few rulers and religious leaders, and by sharing their own approaches to rule, we figured we could perhaps broaden your horizons a little bit !”

Claude immediately lit up giddily, which was unsurprising considering how curious he was about anything foreign and new, but Edelgard unclenching slightly was a welcome surprise. He wasn’t expecting to win her over any time soon, but he thought she’d be more defiant, for longer.

“Note,” he highlighted, “that these are seminars and not lectures for a reason : I expect you all to contribute during the course of the day, and to share any impressions and opinions you might have. There is no absolute best way to rule, and you’re welcome to critique any examples we give you as much as you want.”

“When you take up the mantle of leadership, you will be questioned. You will be tested. You will be asked to explain yourself,” Lucina expanded, voice tinted with very real frustration. Being a teenage Exalt, she’d often struggled to garner sufficient respect from her subjects, even in a time where they should have all been united. “Think of this as an opportunity to practice defending your vision in a safe space among your peers,” she smiled at them, probably feeling a bit more empathy for them than he could muster.

Well, for something they hadn’t rehearsed, he thought that introduction had sounded pretty nice, and they’d nailed without hesitation the whole alternating speaker thing. Though he felt as though he was forgetting something…

Oh, right !

“Before I forget,” he added, fist meeting the palm of his hand with a solid _clap_ , “Archbishop Rhea will occasionally be guest-lecturing, because she’s more familiar with Fódlan’s history, with those who came before you, and also don’t tell her I said it like that because I think I’m not allowed to but anyone who thinks she’s not one of Fódlan’s rulers is plain stupid.”

He paused, before adding, for the sake of relaxing an Edelgard who’d suddenly tensed anew (wow, she really wasn’t fond of Rhea, huh ?) :

“Also, I think she doesn’t trust me to let me unsupervised with all of you too often. Something about foreign heretics corrupting the future of Fódlan or whatever. Can’t say I understand why !”

He gave them a bright innocent grin, which drew a snort from Claude, smiles from Petra and even Dimitri (!), and annoyed Edelgard enough that she forgot to stay wary. Small victories.

Luci must have noticed, because she didn’t have a go at him for needling the millenia-old dragon needlessly again.

“Instead of standing here explaining what this’s gonna be like for ages, then, how about we start off with a concrete example of someone with a _very_ different perspective on rulership than the lot of you, and you can judge for yourself whether you’ve drawn anything of interest from it after we’re done discussing him ?”

Three, two, one…

“And how exactly do you presume to know what our perspectives on rulership are, professor ?” challenged Edelgard, as he’d expected. Pride was a useful — perhaps even necessary — trait in a leader, but it just so often led to becoming predictable.

He knew she’d be the most difficult, so he’d set her up for precisely this moment. And while _he_ lacked the gravitas to rebuke her appropriately…

“Because we do you the politeness of presuming you are not complete wastes of flesh, as Gangrel Sephri II undeniably was. Unless you would rather we compare you to a man who is remembered as the Mad King ?”

Lucina, on the other hand, knew how to lay down the law. The perks of growing up with Cynthia, he supposed.

“… I see. Forgive me, Professor,” a chastened Edelgard apologised. It wasn’t the most contrite thing he’d ever heard, but it was good enough for now.

And now Dimitri was raising his hand, presumably to ask the very question he’d expected upon introducing today’s subject.

“Excuse me, miss Lowell, but if this man was such a terrible individual, why are we studying him ?”

He was perfectly prepared to let his lover handle the question, but instead she threw him a sullen look, which made it clear she didn’t want to have to be the one to say it out loud.

It’s not like he was _fond_ of the guy either, for Naga’s sake !

But, well, it’s not like he knew how to tell her no either.

“Because for the near-totality of his reign, Gangrel was in fact an excellent king. It _really_ pains me to say it, but what he did for Plegia in barely a decade and a half is nothing short of miraculous, and it’s only once he let his inner demons take him over — mostly metaphorically speaking, in this instance — that things started going downhill and he earned his moniker. But it’s a bit hard to explain without context, so I’ll try to set the scene for you.

“You all remember how we touched on the geography of the world’s other continents two weeks ago ? I know we’ve focused on Tellian history since, in order to start at the beginning, but I’m going to skip ahead to next week’s curriculum and talk about Lucina and I’s respective home countries, Ylisse and Plegia. Do you roughly remember where they were on the map ?”

There was a round of nods.

“Good, good. So I’ll cover this in greater detail next week, but to understand the rivalry between Ylisse and Plegia, I need to have a quick word about their creation. Essentially, the continent of Ylisse was mostly united under the Archanean Empire and in the worship of the Divine Dragon Naga. Then, someone — it’s unclear who — discovered the hiding place of a failed experiment by a dark mage, who had attempted to create a Divine Dragon through alchemy and dark magic. Failed in the sense that he couldn’t control it, not that he didn’t succeed. This person and the dragon, who called himself Grima, formed a blood pact in order to let him escape his prison, and they then proceeded to lay waste to the continent, with Grima declaring itself the Fell dragon and being worshiped by some as the harbinger of the End Times. Eventually, a descendant of the Archanean Emperor was blessed by Naga and managed to defeat Grima and his lackey and to seal its spirit away, although he lacked the power to kill it for good. Afterwards, all existing countries having fragmented and the geography of the entire continent having changed, that man founded a new country which became known as Ylisse. He was the first Exalt, Lucina’s great-great and some ancestor.”

He took a moment to breathe, and to let his students digest the information.

“There was, however, a large amount of land which Grima had laid waste to, which most people in the continent stayed well away from. For starters, it now mostly consisted of rugged mountain terrain, wasteland, desert and the occasional prairie here and there. More importantly, it now housed the bones of Grima, which led to a _lot_ of people considering the land cursed.”

In front of their confusion, he marked a pause. Yes, he supposed that when said like that, it wasn’t very impressive.

“Just so we’re clear, Grima was _big_. Big as in, entire cities have been built in the shadow of its bones. Parts of its skeleton are littered across half of Plegia, and it’s by no means a small country. His skull alone is a small mountain in its own right. This wasn’t superstition so much as people not wanting to live with the existential terror of being reminded a monster like that had existed. Anyway, while most people stayed away, the land that would become Plegia attracted a certain bunch. People who didn’t want to leave their ancestral lands for one, all sorts of lowlives attracted to the lawless wastes, but more importantly people who worshipped the Fell Dragon. Under the banner of the one who formed a blood pact with Grima’s descendants, they formed a cult known as the Grimleal. Eventually, the country we now know as Plegia was created around that new religion.

“I’m sorry if this is a little much to throw at you,” he apologised, conscious that he was rushing through this even by his own standards, “but I’ll be covering this part of the story in far greater detail next week so please bear with me until then. What you need to keep in mind is that Ylisse and Plegia are two neighbouring countries literally built around both sides of a continent-wide war with distinct religious overtones. Between this inherited enmity and the fact Ylisse owned all the fertile arable lands, I trust you can imagine the kind of tensions this created over a thousand years ?”

His small class still looked as though they were still stuck on the part about Grima’s bones, but they all managed to give him some nods (though Petra only after Edelgard leaned over and explained the meaning of a word to her — he’d forgotten about her circumstances, definitely slowing down after this then).

In fact, might as well let Lucina speak up next, then. With a silent brush of her hand beneath the desk (they were still in front of the children !) to assure her he’d pick up again when they needed to say nice things about Gangrel, he let her take the lead once more.

“Over the years, open warfare mostly ceased, and while relations were always tense, they eventually reached a semi-stable state of affairs, especially with the Church of Naga and the Grimleal slowly losing their influence in matters of state. However, this changed under the reign of Exalt August III, my grandfather,” she added contritely. 

As much anger as she may have carried towards Plegia once, even she felt the shame of his actions. 

“He was a pious man, more so than his predecessors, and this already made him ill-disposed towards Plegia. However, this grew worse when he heard of rumours that the Grimleal had found a way to resurrect Grima. At this point, the Grimleal were all but operating independently of the Plegian court, but he still grew paranoid that Plegia itself was plotting to destroy Ylisse. He began to reinforce the borders and to muster his levies, until the tipping point was reached. When my grandmother died in childbirth, Exalt August announced without any proof whatsoever that she had been murdered by the Grimleal, and proceeded to raid Plegia in retaliation. 

“By this point, he had become a full-blown zealot. His campaign was brutal and merciless, and anyone suspected of even slight Grimleal sympathies was executed on the spot. And while it turned out that the Grimleal had in fact found a way to possibly resurrect Grima, this does not change the fact that it was not a just war. My grandfather was a cruel man, and a hard one. He mercilessly annihilated the Plegian army, he burned fields and razed churches — sometimes entire villages — and the only thing which managed to stop his disastrous campaign was his death, when his heart suddenly gave out. Many saw this as divine punishment for his cruelty, and when my aunt Emmeryn took the crown she immediately ceased all hostilities with Plegia and withdrew our armies from the country, but at this point the harm had been done. Plegia was ransacked, the harvests were ruined, the coffers were empty and a generation of young men would not come back home to till the fields.”

The silence which fell upon the room when she finished was a heavy, cloying thing, which was unsurprising. From what he’d studied of Fódlani history, while they’d had their share of civil wars, they had been by all accounts rather tame things, if he could say so, compared to some of the things he’d witnessed with his own eyes, let alone what could be found in the complete annals of history. Dimitri alone, perhaps, could fathom the scale of what Lucina had just explained, and even then Duscur had been small in territory.

Anyway, it was time for the most bitter part of this little talk : saying good things about a man he had very, very mixed feelings on.

“In the aftermath, King Adrin, who had proven himself a weak, foolish and cowardly ruler throughout this entire lapse of time, was unanimously ousted by the people, the army and most of the nobility. Problem was, he had no heirs and no siblings ; in fact, he was the last of the Salammo family, the royal house. There were branch families, but most of them were some way off on the family tree and no one liked the guy enough to try and find his rightful heir. Instead, they had to start looking for a new king. Enter Gangrel Sephri.

“Gangrel’s legitimacy was frail at best. King Adrin’s grandfather had a much younger half-sister, borne of a concubine. This sister was married off to a promising commander, but she was found to have committed adultery and unceremoniously thrown to the streets, despite being pregnant. So, while technically the grandson to a king, Gangrel was born on the streets of the Plegian capital. He grew up as a street rat there, a petty thief and some say even a cutthroat. Eventually, upon becoming an adult, he joined the army for a steady paycheque, shortly before the war with Ylisse started. During the war, he proved to have a good sense for conflict and tactics and quickly rose in rank, helped by the fact his superiors were dying in droves, and was one of the very few Plegian commanders to earn actual victories during the conflict. When the war finished, he was a decorated Captain, a bonafide war hero, and he quickly saw there was a throne for the taking.”

He remembered how astonished he’d been when he’d first talked with others and read up on recent Plegian history, and heard a tale completely at odds with what he knew of the petty, spiteful tyrant him and Chrom had eventually struck down in the wastes.

“Gangrel had some legitimacy, no matter how vanishingly flimsy, so he threw his hat into the ring and quickly gathered support from the masses and a decent chunk of army. The nobility, however, remained as a whole reticent to appoint him, as they all favoured one of their own. As the wave of support he’d gathered began to lose steam, he then turned to the one other faction with significant political power in the country, who’d remained entirely neutral so far : the remnants of the Grimleal, whose persecution during the war had generated much sympathy.”

He marked another pause, eager to impress on his class the major effect this one decision had had on history.

“In exchange for their support, he promised to reinstate them as the state religion, name their Hierophant his prime minister, and declare Plegia a theocracy.”

His students instantly looked at him, fairly gobsmacked. He could understand why. The most ground-shattering event politically speaking in Fódlani history was arguably the formation of the Leicester Alliance council, which was at the time as close to a radical departure from traditional monarchical power structures as the continent had ever gotten, and the library here had entire _shelves_ devoted to that event and its repercussions alone.

It had completely blindsided Ylisse and Valm at the time, and they had more precedents to turn to, so he could only imagine what it had been like to them. Arguably the closest analogue they had was Wilhelm uniting the continent under Seiros’ banner and, well, that was a fairly significant parallel to make.

“And so both sides delivered as promised. Hierophant Validar became prime minister and Gangrel was crowned as the second of his name, first of house Sephri, soon after. Now, here’s where we get to the interesting part for you all.

“Your country is ruined, both figuratively and literally. Your harvests won’t be enough to feed your people let alone fill your granaries, your workforce gutted by conscription, your army is in tatters, your lands are full of deserters turned bandits and you don’t have the coin to buy your way out of these problems. You acceded to the throne riding a wave of popular support which may dry out at any moment, and if you don’t prove yourself up to the task, your main sponsor may throw you out to the wolves as soon as it’s advantageous. What, do you think, was the one quality which overwhelmingly allowed Gangrel to salvage the situation ?”

He gave a thankful smile to Lucina, who’d wandered away from him to explain a few words to a confused Petra, whose face had scrunched up slightly in frustration at not being able to follow entirely.

All the other three looked deep in thought, and threw little glances at their comrades, as if gauging how each of the others were faring before daring to put themselves forward. Not ideal — he clearly had his work cut out for him when it came to making them work together willingly and productively, but he still had time. And thankfully, he had in Claude someone willing to take calculated risks.

“Creativity,” he said, taking the lead with the answer he’d very much expected from him. “So many problems all at once, I can’t see the poor guy working it all out through conventional means. So surely his capacity to think outside the box was the one that mattered the most ?”

They all turned to him, but he kept his face impassive. Nuh-uh. This was a collaborative effort.

After an awkward silence, Edelgard seemed to understand he wouldn’t say a thing until they all contributed, so with an expression more suited to a vindictive prosecutor, she gave her own answer.

“Authority. Considering the tasks ahead of him, he had much to work on and little to work with. The most important thing would have been to ensure that there was no dissension in the ranks, nothing which might impede recovery. So, the strength to assert his authority over his subjects, over the army, over his court and on the international stage would have been primordial.”

… At this point, was she even trying to pretend she was not a warlord in the making ? Walhart vibes indeed. He’d expected something along those lines, but at this point it was like she just enjoyed throwing herself down his pitfalls.

Saying it in front of Dimitri and Claude just to throw down the gauntlet at him had been rash enough, but, well, Petra was in the same room.

Her own vassal. A vassal that looked distinctly worried and unsettled over her liege’s enthusiasm for strongman antics.

Naga almighty, this girl was going to start a war out of sheer stubbornness within ten years if left alone.

Still, not his place to comment… yet. He threw Dimitri a look, but the only answer he got was a panicked expression. The Faerghus prince threw one last look towards Lucina, before admitting, mortified :

“I am sorry professor, but I do not have an answer. In truth, I cannot imagine how he succeeded in this situation.”

Well, at least he was honest to a fault ? Still, he wished Dimitri had thrown a random answer there, something to work with for a discussion. 

This did confirm his suspicions, however. Out of the three, Dimitri was the one who should have the most direct experience with rulership, under his regent. Yet he was by far the poorest of the three when it came to statecraft. Lack of natural inclinations, sabotage, disinterest ? Something to linger on later.

As one, they all turned to him, waiting for an answer.

Well, that was just rude.

He turned to the last of his students for the day.

“Petra ?”

The three lordlings all looked a little surprised for a moment, and then suitably ashamed. He’d expected better from Claude and Dimitri — Edelgard might have already been used of thinking of Petra as an underling rather than a future ruler in her own right, but the other two just seemed to have forgotten about her. Coming from the Almyran, that was doubly disappointing.

The Brigidian princess opened her mouth, closed it, looked frustrated for an instant and then quickly conferred with Lucina, the specific word she was looking for apparently eluding her until she finally turned back to him.

“Under… handedness ?…” she chanced, tasting the unknown word on her lips. “Not being clever, but being tricky.He was of weakness in his home, and his country was of weakness in the world. When an animal is being cornered, it is not knowing how to fight fair.”

Her expression tightened as she realised she was not conveying what she wanted eloquently enough. She took a pause, thinking her words over properly, before picking up again. Robin noted with a little delight that this time, she seemed to be addressing her classmates rather than him.

“When the prey is too strong, you do not hunt it. If you are not being able to, you run. If you cannot run, you trick it. Gangrel was a thief — he knew how to hunt, and he knew what being of weakness was.”

There was a little silence as the Academy’s three star students digested her rather compelling point — and she was mostly right on the money. A bit more hunting metaphors than really worked, though he figured that was possibly because it might very well have been the vocabulary she knew best in Fódlani, seeing as it was a regular conversation topic of hers.

Edelgard, in particular, looked as though she was considering her classmate in a whole new light. He’d seen them occasionally interacting before, but it had seemed mostly superficial, so it was entirely possible that she was discovering Petra’s keen understanding of power dynamics — something he’d picked up on when chatting with her during her morning drills, which she often ran at the same time as Lucina.

It had also probably not been lost on the Imperial heiress that she too had a vassal who knew how to hunt, knew what being in the inferior position was like and had just demonstrated an understanding of how to combat the issue. She’d advocated for the stern, tough centralisation of power, and received an appropriate rebuke. Good, good — Petra was a good foil to keep her on her toes. Not powerful enough of a threat to push her into paranoia and rash behaviour, but still not unimportant enough that she could just dismiss her. He’d added her to the group as an afterthought, but that decision might yet prove a very happy accident.

The other two seemed to have picked up that there was some tension, but they seemed mostly interested in her primary statement, Claude looking excited at the different perspective while Dimitri nodded absently as he ran the matter again in his head.

Time to pick the control of the class back up then. He clapped his hands loudly, calling their attention back to him.

“And here you have highlighted for you benefit number one of this seminar : multiple perspective ! Petra is indeed the closest out of all of you. That’s not to say Edelgard and Claude are wrong — Gangrel was a very authoritarian ruler, and an outright tyrant by the end, and he was certainly creative in some of the ways he chose to deal with things. But it was his guile, his ability to play off all his opponents against each other and to manoeuvre people into ideal situations which made him a successful ruler. Or, more precisely, it was his ruthlessness in resorting to these methods.”

He slowly got up and made his way to a crude map of the Ylissean continent which decorated the wall.

“You see,” he continued, pointing at the line on the map where Ylisse met Plegia, “the first thing he needed was to take back control of the army, to secure a means of applying his authority in a tangible manner. His problem was that he didn’t have the money to refill the ranks, and what he currently had was tied up barely containing the borderlands’ brand new bandit infestation. Now, how do you think he began solving both of these problems in one move ?”

It was a rhetorical question, and by now his students were familiar enough with his teaching style that they didn’t interrupt him. Claude might have been tricky enough to think this up if given enough time, but he simply lacked the necessary cruelty to conjure it up instantly, while the other three were just too straightforward.

“Simple : he ordered some of his units to disguise as bandits and raid neighbouring Ylissean border territories, and to act as cruelly as possible. When the Ylissean diplomats came to ask what on Earth he was thinking, he simply told them that it must have been the work of the bandits, and apologised profusely for failing to contain them. He explained that with his army in its current state, he could barely protect his own lands, let alone prevent them for ranging on the other side of the border. So he sent the envoys back, promising to do his best to strike them down. Except he couldn’t, and the ‘raids’ grew worse. So eventually, Ylisse lost patience and sent their own troops to hunt down all the larger bandit camps in the borderlands.

“So this is how he got rid of the bandits. But why didn’t he simply ask for help ? Ylisse were keenly aware of their responsibility in creating the situation, and Exalt Emmeryn would have absolutely acquiesced had Gangrel asked her to lend military aid. Why trick them into acting ?”

This time, he gave them a little ‘come on’ gesture with his hand, indicating he was expecting an answer.

Unsurprisingly, Claude was the first one to take the plunge, but surprisingly he gave the answer Robin had been expecting from Edelgard — albeit with some clear distaste for it.

“Pride ? He was trying to win back the army. If he’d shown he was weak enough to have to ask, he’d have lost the respect of his soldiers, especially considering they’d been fighting Ylisse for years before, no ?”

Edelgard nodded, though she looked as though that wasn’t enough of a comprehensible justification to her. Good ! He’d been a bit scared she’d think that was an entirely rational thing to do. Which might have been a little unfair, now that he thought about it, but at this point she’d pushed enough of his buttons he was treading _very_ carefully.

“That’s not a bad idea, and it probably definitely played a part in why he didn’t ask in the first place, but it doesn’t explain why he tricked them. If it was only about pride, he would have wanted to solve this on his own. What else ?”

His students mulled over it a little more, and Petra and Edelgard began muttering to each other (again — he was changing the seating plan next time, none of this Black Eagles solidarity here), but oddly it was Lucina who caught his attention. She was staring fixedly at a brooding Dimitri, and when he looked a little hesitant to speak up, she quickly caught his eye and nodded reassuringly.

You know, he should probably make sure Dimitri wasn’t developing a crush on Lucina. Well, he was Ylisse’s premier cupid — he’d find the boy a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. He wasn’t one to judge, especially so long as it directed his attentions elsewhere.

The sheer venom in the boy’s voice, however, stopped his thoughts right in their tracks.

“To be the wronged party. Considering the tense relations between both countries, if Ylisse break into his borders with armed troops, he gets to retaliate in all impunity.”

He didn’t expand. Considering how personal that sounded, what he knew of the Tragedy of Duscur, and the fact Dimitri’s apparent confidant and best friend was from Duscur, that had _interesting_ implications about his past… That he really shouldn’t get sidetracked by right now.

“Wow,” whistled Claude, breaking the sudden tension a little bit, “gotta say I wasn’t expecting that one to come from you, your princeliness ! Still, it works though. Is that how he got the money then ? He asked for reparations ?”

He gave the Deer a grateful look, thankful for the opportunity to get this show back on the rails, to which Claude answered with a small wink. Voluntary, then, as he’d expected. Good kid.

“Nearly ! He did ask for reparations in grain and coin, which the Exalt granted him, but he also managed to secure loans at an excellent interest rate from other countries in Valm, who were looking at Ylisse’s recent apparent warmongering with a worried eye. So, in one move and a handful of months, he’d gotten his army back, gotten his finances out of red for now and won a major diplomatic confrontation with their hated enemy.”

“Excuse me, Professor Robin,” Edelgard interjected, “but why did Ylisse accept to pay reparations ? Even had they not suspected foul play, they were perfectly justified in intervening once Plegia proved incapable of reining in the bandits.”

“First of all, let me assure you that no one at the time seriously suspected any duplicity,” Lucina intervened, in her element now that Ylisse itself was the subject. “This I know because we constantly fell for the same trick for years after that, and it was not until the very day Gangrel declared war on Ylisse that we knew for certain we had been had. As for why aunt Emmeryn agreed to pay, I am afraid we shall have to gloss over it, as she is the subject of our next seminar — both hers and Gangrel’s rules were shaped by Exalt August’s actions, but both drew radically different lessons from it. To summarise it succinctly, Emmeryn believed the only way to prevent future conflicts of this nature was not to scare Plegia into submission, but by giving them no cause for fear in the first place. She all but disbanded the army, she opened her borders to traders, and she met any diplomatic effort with goodwill and encouragement.”

Seeing that Edelgard was about to interrupt her, she shushed her with a small wave of her hand.

“Save your questions for now. As I said, we will discuss my aunt at length during the next session. For now, you just need to understand that she was willing to work with Plegia, and that Gangrel exploited this fact.”

She nodded back to him, inviting him to pick the flow of conversation back up.

“This capacity to constantly draw others’ attention away from his true goals and/or the real outcomes of his actions was the main reason Plegia managed to build back up so fast. By the time Plegia started registering as a potential threat to anyone, it was powerful and rich enough that it could not easily be bullied. His ruthless exploitation of the Grimleal’s… less savoury talents was key in that regard. They remain to this day — what’s left of them — some of the world’s foremost experts on dark magic, and, before we eradicated all the records we could find, were the world’s premier alchemists and necromancers.”

“Necromancy ? As in ghosts and skeletons ?” immediately queried Dimitri, looking appropriately horrified and disbelieving. Claude wasn’t far behind, but the most surprising reaction was from Edelgard. While she was affecting a certain nonchalance, the way she’d blanched was oddly reminiscent of Lysithea when she’d discussed her own experiences with experimental dark magic.

He’d noticed the similar hair colour and had wanted to avoid drawing conclusions, but maybe that was indeed something to explore. Later, though.

“If only ! Bonewalkers are really mostly pushovers and don’t really venture out of tombs and the like — they’re barely found outside of Valm and Magvel these days,” he informed them, much to their apparent horror. Were they not a thing here ? Sure, they weren’t common, but you always heard about the odd ruin or graveyard where they kept rising. “Risen are essentially powerful, mostly mindless human corpses bound to a caster’s will. That’s all the details you’re ever getting from me, and if I learn any one of you is attempting to even only find out how to make one out of idle curiosity, I will hunt you down. I hope we’re clear on that ?”

He gave all of them a pointed glare, though he mostly focused on Claude. Edelgard, Dimitri and Petra looked appropriately disgusted, but the Riegan heir… Robin certainly didn’t think Claude would _use_ them, but he was _very_ curious, and liable to try and figure it out just to see how it worked. And the less people knew, the better.

As far as knowledge of the complete mechanisms went, they were down to him, Tharja, Libra and Noire, Miriel and Laurent, Maribelle, Ricken and Brady, as well as Henry and Lissa. Possibly Tiki, he’d never asked. At most twelve people (that he knew of), only four of which could actually theoretically cast the damn thing. He had no intention of raising that number.

“Sorry Teach,” Claude intervened, “I won’t ask about those Risen things, but are you saying that the dead rising is a normal occurrence outside of Fódlan ?”

Huh, so they really didn’t get any around here. Curious.

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say normal, because several factors usually have to be met in order for Bonewalkers to rise which severely limit the amount of places you see them. Allow me to quickly deviate on magical theory — I’ll try and be fast since none of you have particularly studied magic beyond the basics,” he apologised in advance. “Essentially, magic as an energy is not constant. It’s malleable — otherwise, we couldn’t bend it to our will in so many different ways. Beyond the obvious dichotomy of Reason and Faith, which are not so different as you might believe, it can be molded in plenty of different ways. There’s kinetic magic, channeled through movement, aural magic, channeled through sound… I could go on for a while, but while these methods aren’t the most efficient, they exist. What many people forget this implies, however, is that magic does not always respond to our conscious will. So when we conduct enough actions that hold sufficient symbolic weight in one given area, we eventually… shape the ambient magic, for lack of a better word, into giving the place a particular attunement. And in places like graveyards, infused with the idea that only the dead live there, or at abandoned sacred places, where a sense of duty and obligation permeates the ground, this can lead to skeletons spontaneously rising from the graves, either to prevent the living from intruding, or heretics from profaning the grounds.” 

Judging from the shocked looks he was getting, this definitely wasn’t normal then. Naga, it must be nice to be able to visit a ruin without worrying about suddenly being beset by flaming skeletons. Some of those Zofian temples had been unexpectedly hostile when he and Lucina had visited.

“Now, be mindful we’re talking about the best of our understanding here, not an absolute truth — ambient mana alteration and sympathetic resonance are both incredibly obscure and complex fields of study in which I am no expert, so don’t take my words as the gospel truth. Not to mention it takes centuries, sometimes the better part of millennia before…”

He trailed off as he could _feel_ the puzzle pieces clicking in his head.

“That’s why you have none !” he happily exclaimed. “Your recorded history prior to the unification was pretty much erased, and it’s only been a thousand and some years since ! Not to mention most places of significance are still occupied to this day. It’s not that it doesn’t happen here, and just that there’s nowhere where the conditions have been met !”

He paused for a second.

“Well, possibly. For all I know there’s some other reason entirely, but that seems a good bet. Anyway, Gangrel !” he pushed on, realising he’d strayed yet again from his subject. “Simply put, he put the Grimleal to work. He used Risen down in the mines to supplement the missing workforce, as construction workers, to ambush foreign traders and steal their goods…

“He could’ve probably used them even more effectively if not for two factors : he wanted to keep them secret, because he knew no one would willingly work with him if they learned about them, and he was worried that raising too many would concentrate too much power in the hands of the Grimleal. So instead, he contented himself with building back his country slowly and steadily, mostly off the back of the sale of precious metals and gemstones — Plegia’s most valuable export by far. A few years into his reign, Gangrel had a reputation as a harsh but fair ruler internally, and as a serious, reliable ruler focused on internal matters abroad. Relations with Ylisse were still frigid at best, but there had been no hostilities for a while. Overall, Gangrel, a compromise choice virtually unknown by anyone of importance a year before his coronation, had managed to build back up on a solid base a country that had been all but pecked by the crows.”

He took a slow, long breath. The hard part was over — he’d managed to be as impartial as he was going to get. Now they finally got to spit at his memory, and Lucina was unsurprisingly eager to go.

* * *

Robin smiled at them.

It wasn’t a nice smile.

In fact, it had a hint of the cruel tinge she’d come to associate with the fake Volkhard von Arundel’s smiles.

Which was worrying, for many reasons. Because Edelgard might lack Claude’s deductive abilities, but she wasn’t blind by any means, and Robin’s classroom was well-organised. Next to each map of separate continents, a handful of important annotations had been pinned to boards. It was one of the first things anyone entering the room noted immediately : foreign pennants and religious symbols adorning every slice of an unknown world they’d never suspected. And stuck next to Plegia, on the map, under the country’s standard, was a six-eyed motif with only a short blurb to explain it — _Grima’s eyes, Grimleal symbol. Avoid anything using it, and never display it if you want to avoid problems_.

The motif had seemed familiar, but she hadn’t really worked out from where until last week, when upon catching him training Felix, she’d seen him with his arm outstretched in front of him, and had spied the three eyes sewn along the length of his coat’s sleeve.

Was he one of them ? Or, at least, had he once been ? They knew he was from Plegia, but Claude had mentioned before that Robin had very little love for his home country. A defector then ? Whatever the case, that still made him someone who had worshipped a supposed dragon god of ruin, and she knew from the tips he gave Hubert that he had some degree of mastery of dark magic that went beyond the casual.

She was still unsure about what he wanted from these seminars — not just teaching, no matter what he might say —, and the more she learned about him the more convinced she was she should stay away, but at the same time this had already proven a treasure trove of information, both on the world, her classmates (if Petra is pushed, she will push back, and keep an eye on Dimitri — he might suspect foul play) and her teachers (not just about their past, but through what they hadn’t said. They’d not given a precise time frame, but if the Ylissean ruler of that time was Lucina’s aunt, that implied she might have died fairly young if her brother was the one to inherit rather than any children. That, and their clear loathing for the man, spoke of a reign that they were most likely familiar with).

“And then,” their teacher intoned, voice a little tighter than it had previously been, “he learned the one piece of information which eventually led to his ruin. He learned about Walhart the Conqueror.”

“Walhart was the king of the tiny country of Valm — spelled like the continent,” professor Lucina spoke up, surprising her — she’d almost forgotten the woman’s presence, which was uncommon. She had a way of commanding attention wherever she went. “For reasons we won’t detail here, as he is also someone we will talk about at a later date, Walhart had gotten it into his head to conquer the entire world — explicitly to put an end to what he deemed the tyranny of the gods. And at that point in time, it was beginning to become apparent that he had a fair chance of succeeding, swallowing up country after country as he was. And Gangrel, as you remember, was the ruler of a theocracy. He had no illusions as to what would happen to him should Walhart succeed and turn his eyes to the Ylissean continent. So he figured that the continent needed to be ready to fight him off.”

When her teacher mentioned this Walhart, Edelgard couldn’t help but notice both of the foreigner’s eyes glided over to her for an instant. She instantly quelled the panic she felt rise up within her. If they suspected anything of her plans, they would have surely acted already — not to mention that she had already suspected Robin knew something, thanks to his little impromptu assassination lesson whose purpose she could still not make heads nor tail of.

“Unfortunately, Gangrel was still a street thug at heart. And a street thug’s first priority is never collective security, but personal security. Not to mention that he still held a sizeable hatred for Ylisse, which had carried over from the war. This means that instead of reaching out to Ylisse and Regna Ferox and seek unity against this greater threat, Gangrel instead decided he needed to conquer the whole continent under his banner before Walhart came for him.”

Beyond the shock value of her blue-haired teacher’s words, Edelgard admitted in the privacy of her thoughts that it was not an idea entirely void of merit, though she knew better than to voice it out loud this time. She hadn’t missed how the others felt about her feelings on strong rulership — best not to draw attention once more. It mostly depended on the time frame — if he could manage to attain victory soon enough prior to the coming of this Walhart, then surely he would’ve had enough time to recover. If he was unsure of Plegia and Ylisse’s capacity to work together, it was a sensible option to at least consider.

“So during the next decade, he increasingly focused on a single set of three goals : building up his army, weakening Ylisse and Regna Ferox, and funding Walhart’s opponents enough to win some time. There is… some debate over his mental state throughout this period, as the journals recovered by m… by Morgan, the current regent of Plegia, seem to indicate an almost unnatural descent towards madness, as his original goal is increasingly forgotten in favour of the eradication of Ylisse and the lineage of the Exalts. As we know that Hierophant Validar wished for both of these things, it has been suggested that the Grimleal cursed him into becoming the spiteful, vengeance-oriented man he eventually turned into. I cannot in good conscience avoid mentioning this, but know that I personally cannot imagine this altering his personality significantly — it just made him more prone to making mistakes.”

That stutter — coming from professor Lucina, usually so careful with her words when she did not exude authority, it was worth noting down. She’d been about to say something else, hadn’t she ?Was this Morgan special somehow ? Something to investigate at a later date. 

At a time where she wasn’t busy being horrified at the thought of skilled dark magic practitioners slowly turning their puppet rulers insane, unnoticed as they lurked at their side. One more thing for Hubert and her to keep a watch on, then.

What was another fear to add to the pile ?

“Nevertheless, after spending years sabotaging our relations with Regna Ferox and picking at our borders, he eventually declared war on Ylisse some… five, six years ago now ?” she dropped, looking to her companion for confirmation. At his nod, she carried on. “A country that he had spent a decade and a half rebuilding from the ground up, he bankrupted in a matter of months, destroying its international reputation in the bargain and setting the path for a takeover by Hierophant Validar. While he saw early success against Ylisse thanks to our unreadiness and treachery within our walls, my father secured an alliance with Regna Ferox and with our combined armies, helped by mass desertions among the Plegian army after the death of Exalt Emmeryn, my father eventually pushed back their soldiers and slew Gangrel on the battlefield, marking the end of his reign.

“I will once again keep from discussing the details of the war here beyond its inception, as we will be looking at them in greater depth when we talk about my aunt — because while my father was the one who took to the battlefield, it was ultimately her actions which bought us victory.”

At that, Robin gave a solemn nod, looking uncharacteristically glum, and it occurred to her that to him, they had gradually transitioned from talking about history, perhaps their early childhood at best, to talking about their personal experiences. Suddenly, Lucina and Robin’s strength, which seemed so out of place, gained a new context which made them seem far less inhuman — unlike all of them, they had known war, a harsh one by the sounds of it, and acquired the strength to survive it.

And, as she shared a look with Dimitri and Claude, who clearly had the same thought on their mind, if they had the timing down correctly…

“Would this be, then, the Plegian campaign which you mentioned leading ?” she asked her white-haired teacher.

He beamed in return, though there was still a little tightness to it. There were definitely regrets there, she figured.

“Correct !” he returned. “I was tactician to the Shepherds, the Ylissean army’s vanguard, under prince Chrom. When Chrom was given joint command of the army along Khan Flavia, I was integrated to the war council and while the Shepherds remained my primary charge on the battlefield, I was his chief strategist for the remainder of the campaign.”

It was an odd thing, to hear it said so simply. There was nothing new in what he’d just said, but hearing all those bits and pieces of information he’d previously fed them come together within an actually understandable frame… It gave him a certain _weight_. The sort of weight that people like Lord Bergliez had acquired, the knowledge that you were standing in the presence of the kind of person that had clawed their way into history.

And for the very first time she found herself wondering not why they had come _here_ — but why they had left _there_.

“And since we’ve reached the end of this brief summary of his life,” he carried on, “some food for thought. _F-fool of...a prince... Your people care not for you... You are...alone... As every man lives and dies: …alone…_ "

The words, spoken in an unkind imitation of someone’s snarly, nasal voice settled heavily into the silence, which none of them dared interrupt at first. They’d carried a certain gravitas to them, and surprisingly Dimitri was the first to figure out why :

“Were they… Gangrel’s dying words ?”

“Indeed,” was the tactician’s grim nod. “Chrom and I chased him down to the Border Wastes, and there, on the battlefield, Chrom eventually slew him personally. His army routed, a sword in his gut courtesy of his most hated enemy… that was the best he found to say. I want you to keep in the back of your head how that… _unique_ personal philosophy might have affected his thought process, now, as we go back to discuss the decisions he made throughout his rule and your opinion on them.”

* * *

It was hours until they’d emerged from the classroom, later than any of them had expected. As she exited the room, Petra allowed herself a luxuriant stretch, feeling one of her shoulders pop out after spending so long hunched over taking notes.

True to their introductory speech, Lucina and Robin had let the four of them take the lead for the remainder of the seminar, simply introducing a problematic faced by Gangrel, having them guess how he might have dealt with it, and then having them critique his eventual choices after explaining them.

As she had suspected, the class wasn’t perfectly tailored to her — it usually presumed a latitude in one’s freedom of action that Brigid would forever lack in its current state as a glorified Imperial province. But she appreciated being included anyway, even though she suspected it was at least partly to avoid singling out the three house leaders too obviously.

She had learned much from the professors before, and the same had held true today. Not only from the content of their lessons, but also from what they had brought out of her fellow classmates.

Petra would willingly admit that she was quite fond of Edelgard. The heiress had played no part in the war or her current predicament, and had been nothing if not welcoming. Lately, even her usually aloof composure had begun to broke down, helped by professor Byleth’s continued efforts to get her to socialise more. Even Dorothea was fond of her — and Petra had yet to hear her say anything good about Fódlani nobility.

This did not mean that she would turn a blind eye to her tendencies, however. If this seminar had served a single purpose, it was that what she’d imagined to be a habit of taking the lead seemed in fact to be an authoritarian bent which unsettled her considerably.

Oh, after her first intervention, she had been far more careful in choosing her words, but the harm was done. It wasn’t that she’d advocated for anything particularly heinous — simply that the fact her instant response to possible challenges was to quash dissent and assert her power hinted at… unfortunate tendencies. Petra didn’t _think_ Edelgard had it in her to be tyrannical, but people changed over the years, and she had to think of Brigid’s future.

In that regard, none of what she’d heard, even from Claude or Dimitri, had comforted her much regarding Fódlan’s future. Both had also showcased worrying bends, Dimitri with a savage mean streak she’d never have suspected from the awkward boy — though he seemed at least conscious he needed to keep a handle on it — and Claude a tendency to suggest working behind everyone’s backs in a way which made it hard to imagine trusting him with anything.

Well, this is what the three of them were here for, after all. She, on the other hand, would not fail to take advantage of those opportunities — and if the other three were yet a bit green in unexpected places, it was good to know.

Though it had been quite entertaining watching the other three each blanch in their own way when upon discussing Gangrel’s career as a soldier and his choice of battlefield leadership, having explained what the profile he referred to as a trickster archetype was, their teacher, after discussing Gangrel’s favoured Levin sword, had pulled out his own sword and stabbed it into the desk, happily exclaiming that they should ‘take a look, I looted this one from his corpse after all’.

She’d been wary ever since their very first encounter, the one where he had dissected her fighting style in a few minutes from nothing but watching her warm up. It’s not like the fact he was dangerous was a secret ; it was right in his eyes, whenever he watched you. But somehow, whatever the others had seen in him, they apparently hadn’t imagined him capable of this level of pragmatic ruthlessness. Odd.

Or maybe it was about what looting the corpse of a king implied about his stance towards the respect owed to rulers. If so, that was just as odd : of all the people at the monastery, lady Rhea was the one who truly radiated the aura of certain confidence which belonged to those at the top of the food chain, and Robin had certainly not been known to respect _her_ authority.

With all this, however, she’d missed the chance to get the second half of her morning practice in — and she could not afford to slack. Stopping by the dining hall for a quick snack (they’d spent far too long in that room without a break), she made her way to the training grounds, hoping they wouldn’t be too crowded. Most of the ones who were serious enough about their training that they wouldn’t spend what a day off doing something else were morning people, so she should be fine, but she was unfamiliar with who used the grounds this late in the afternoon.

The good news was that they were almost deserted. The bad news was that they weren’t empty. Instead, a lone Felix was endlessly running through the same set of movements, apparently attempting to get them down absolutely perfectly.

Well, at least he wasn’t likely to disturb her — the Blue Lion student wasn’t exactly the greatest chatterbox in the student body.

So she began going through her stretches, and true to her prediction, Felix just gave her a quick considering look after catching her presence from the corner of his eyes, before going back to his work.

Grabbing a training sword and beginning her own drills, they both worked in silence for a while, until she took her first break. At that point, Felix, who had been occasionally eyeing her, walked up to her.

“Want to spar ?”

Well, he was straight to the point, at least.

Did she want to spar ? She still wasn’t entirely happy with her speed on her current drill, but… today had been surprisingly tense, in some ways. And here was a willing outlet.

“I would be glad to accept,” she answered with a nod.

Was that a smirk on his face ? Was he actually looking forward to… oh, he’d nursed a grudge from the mock battle hadn’t he ?

Well, in a way, she supposed that might make this even better, if they both had frustrations to vent.

* * *

“It’s been a while since we’ve had time like this, huh ?”

Against her, Robin shifted so she that she could nestle more comfortably against him. Rather than stay cooped up inside the monastery, they’d elected to take the rest of what _really_ should have been a day off had Robin not volunteered them for a day more of teaching to go out.

It was not as tough she was the kind of person to enjoy having too much idle time on her hands — but Robin was right. 

It had been a while since they had managed to sneak out for some quiet time together.

“And whose fault would that be ?”

“Mine entirely for getting us in this mess and not wanting to leave it behind, dear,” he dutifully answered.

She was not angry at him, truly, but her man could do with a little nudge to his ego every now and then.

“Good. And you’re certain the air patrol doesn’t pass over here ?”

“Sure. I bribed Alois yesterday for today’s patrol routes.”

Well, that was as close to certainty as they’d get.

Being both fairly private people, they’d found it hard to sneak some simple hours together outside the privacy of their bedroom, when the monastery was always so lively. When added to the fact that it was a religious locale, and that they had to set an example to the students (or at least so she believed — she knew Robin had a far less optimistic view of some of their students’ priorities), the last week had begun to felt properly stifling.

So for the rest of the day, she’d borrowed a pegasus from the stables and they had flown away to a little vale cradled between three peaks some half an hour’s flight away, where they could settle down for the rest of the afternoon and evening — they’d even packed dinner.

And so with the need not to risk being taken for one of the Manuelas of this world gone, she rose a little away from Robin, before removing her cloak, her riding boots, and just about any item of non-necessary clothing, until she was down to her shirt and riding trouser. Next to her, Robin did the same, finally divesting himself of his ridiculous coat.

(He would not be Robin without it, and for all their flaws, the Grimleal made the most comfortable travel coats she’d ever seen, but it was a bit of an eyesore.)

With a twin sigh of satisfaction, they both laid their feet into the stream which ran down this slope. This early in the spring, it was freezing, being mostly meltwater, but there was something immensely refreshing about it. Aunt Lissa had often taken her and Cynthia out to lady Maribelle’s lands in Themis during her childhood, where they had done much the same.

They remained silent for a little moment, enjoying the quiet of each other’s company, before the cold eventually made them get their feet out of the water, and they laid out a blanket on the grass.

“You know,” Robin suddenly began, “if you’d really rather go home, we could. With our pay for this month, we wouldn’t be too far off the total, and I could negotiate with Anna to get the rest on arrival. I know I’ve been all over the place with new things to do since we arrived, but you know you’ll always come first.”

She gave a little snort at that, answered by a little elbow nudge which completely failed to dislodge her from her place at his side.

“I’m serious, you know.”

“I know,” she reassured him. “But you would hate every minute of it. You would not be you if you could leave a puzzle unsolved, and this one in particular tugs at too many of your heartstrings. Lady Tiki, not to mention Nowi and Nah, would be elated at discovering possible new cousins, and you cannot fathom not helping them find a chance to stave off loneliness. Not to mention that you have gotten invested in some of these children now. You could not bear to leave them to fend on their own, just like you could not leave us. Am I wrong ?”

“… No, you’re right as always, Luci. In my defence, I really _was_ planning to be done with this quickly.”

“Are you not the one who castigated Claude about his over-reliance on prepared plans ?”

“Point taken,” he laughed. “But if we’re going to talk about my soft spot for the students, aren’t we going to talk about those little lions that follow you around everywhere ? They’ve even got your colour scheme right !”

“W-well, you boorish man, if I am to be stuck here with you, I might as well find something to do. Helping them is simply my job,” she (poorly) defended herself, somewhat flustered. 

When they’d first arrived, she’d warned him about getting too attached to what would likely be another set of temporary students.

And look at her now.

“I’m just saying, dear, you have your favourites too. Petra and Ingrid all but worship the ground you walk on — and as far as the former is concerned, she sure enjoys watching you walk it,” he added with an insufferable wink (again with this !), “I’m expecting Dimitri to come in any day now with the adoption papers, and Felix has actually not insulted you once since we’ve been here, which I think might be his standard for respect. He sure doesn’t hold back with me, anyway. Even the little princess is fond of you, though not quite as much as she is of her teacher, and Naga knows _that one_ doesn’t trust easy.”

“Then perhaps they were simply lacking in other role models,” she retorted with a withering glare.

His only response was another open-throated laugh, before he fell silent again. In fact, he’d been a bit _too_ silent throughout the whole afternoon.

“You really did not want to talk about Gangrel, didn’t you ?” she asked softly.

“No,” he confirmed with a sad smile. “It was a good object lesson, and I don’t regret my choice, especially because I’m hoping it’ll let them fully appreciate just how exceptional Emmeryn was, but I don’t have to like it.”

“You do not,” she opined, nuzzling him slightly. “That is what makes you a good man. A more petty one would have taken the opportunity to slander him beyond what he is owed, and yet you gave them as close to an objective account of his life as you could.”

“Hey,” he weakly joked, eyes betraying his gratefulness for the words, “I’m plenty petty.”

“That you are, you horrible man, but never when it matters,” she smiled, turning towards him.

“When did I ever deserve someone like you,” he asked, voice filling with an awe that still sparked flutters in her stomach, as he leaned in for a kiss. She let him get away with it, knowing it was his way of conceding the point — and quite enjoying the process anyhow.

This went on for a handful of rather lovely minutes, before the sound of beating wings had them suddenly separate.

“Who goes— oh,” Seteth’s voice boomed before fading out.

With an embarrassed yelp, she jumped out of Robin’s arms. Her lover, on the other hand, gave the Archbishop’s advisor a tight smile betrayed by a very annoyed glare.

“Seteth, what brings you here ?” he asked, voice all syrupy-sweet, the kind he used when Vaike and/or Stahl had pilfered from the supply convoy again and he had just wasted three hours working out with the quartermaster where the missing food had gone.

“Well,” he began, obviously uncomfortable with the situation — which was unsurprising. Seteth was arguably the most strait-laced person in the entire monastery, and the Hero-King knew she was one to judge. “I decided to go on a flight to clear my mind, and, ehrm…. well, there is usually no one around here, and without your respective cloaks, I had thought you might be students fooling around instead of patrolling…”

“Well, we aren’t,” was Robin’s firm rebuttal. “In fact, we are two engaged adults, spending time together on our day off from work, away from the monastery grounds, away from easily impressionable students, in an out of the way location where we will not disturb anyone. So as you can see, everything is fine.”

_Did he have to be so forward about it !?_

“Ah. I, uhm, see. My apologies for disturbing you.”

There was a beat of silence, as Seteth awkwardly hovered on his wyvern.

“Seteth, if you do not leave us to our date _now_ , I am setting you on fire and not even Rhea will blame me.”

Seteth’s face quickly cycled between mortification and outrage, until he finally settled on the former and took a solid handle of his reins again, taking off and darting away towards wherever wasn’t here precisely.

The two were silent for a little while as they watched him fly off.

“… Was that a bit harsh ?”

“Undoubtedly,” she smiled. “But I do not think I particularly mind right now.”

“I’ll apologise tomorrow,” Robin promised as he reached for the basket they’d brought along. “Well, since the mood got ruined, what say you we get started on dinner ?”

“I would love to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, first of all, little disclaimer : a fair bit of literally all the lore mentioned in this chapter is fanon, though only wherever there wasn't any existing information. Which is everywhere, because FE has never been very thorough on building up lore prior to 3H, and even then it's not exactly Dark Souls.
> 
> I tried to reconcile the Gangrel we fight and despise for half the game with the Gangrel we can recrute in the DLC, and I hope it's a mostly sensible portrayal. As for the Grimleal influencing his descent into vengeful madness... I can't believe his hatred didn't come from -somewhere- already extant but it's too convenient an explanation when we know it was one of Validar's goals and there's such an incomprehensibly large gap between Gangrel's stated objective in-storyline (raze Ylisse to the ground and erase the lineage of the Exalts) and the objective he mentions in-DLC (stopping Walhart). He's still a petty asshole, though.
> 
> All the stuff mentioned about magic and undead is 100% made-up, though their being more common in Valm and Magvel is a nod to these two being the only continents bonewalkers are found on in the series. I'm quite happy with my explanation for why they appear naturally in some places like temples and graveyards in Gaiden/Echoes.
> 
> If the magic system sounds nebulous, that's because it is. I just like the idea of there being a lot to magic that no one's quite sure about yet, once you veer off the beaten path of Tome magic and Faith/Light. Kinetic and Aural magic are references to the Dancing and Singing skills, as the best way I can find of translating their in-game effect to a possible explanation. This'll get explored in more detail later on, though, most notably through Lysithea (who else ?) but also Dorothea.
> 
> Anyway, there's probably more I should say here, but these end notes are always way longer than they should be, so as ever, if you have a question, just drop it in the comments, I usually get around to answering most of them.
> 
> Thank you for reading !


End file.
